[1G01-07] Thermal Hydraulic Experiment/Analysis

[1G04] Operating criteria and flow behavior of Supersonic Steam Injector

*eita koyama¹, yutaka abe¹, akiko kaneko¹, hiroyuki Yoshida² (1. University of Tsukuba, 2. JAEA)

Keywords:Steam injector, Direct contact condensation, Operating criteria

The steam injector (SI) is a jet pump driven by direct contact condensation of water and steam. It is also a heat exchanger with high heat transfer performance, and it requires no external power source because it is driven only by water and steam. For these reasons, it is expected that safety and economic efficiency will be improved when applied to the safety system of a nuclear power plant. However, the flow behavior when SI produces a high discharge pressure has not been clarified yet, and there is little knowledge to specify the operating range of SI.
In this research, we conducted an experiment to clarify the conditions under which SI can operate. By changing the flow rates of water and steam as parameters, and by performing visualization observation and pressure distribution measurement using a high-speed camera, the flow behavior inside the SI can be observed in detail, and the SI operation range from that flow behavior can be observed. Was experimentally identified. Furthermore, we evaluated the range of possible operation by arranging the internal flow structure according to the cooling capacity of water and the latent heat of condensation of steam.