Frontiers in Energy >

2009 , Vol. 3 >Issue 2: 175 - 180

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11708-009-0029-6

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Experimental study of critical flow of water at supercritical pressure

  • Yuzhou CHEN , 1 ,
  • Chunsheng YANG 1 ,
  • Shuming ZHANG 1 ,
  • Minfu ZHAO 1 ,
  • Kaiwen DU 1 ,
  • Xu CHENG 2
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  • 1. China Institute of Atomic Energy, Beijing 102413, China
  • 2. School of Nuclear Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China

Received date: 28 Nov 2008

Accepted date: 30 Jan 2009

Published date: 05 Jun 2009

Copyright

2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Abstract

Experimental studies of the critical flow of water were conducted under steady-state conditions with a nozzle 1.41 mm in diameter and 4.35 mm in length, covering the inlet pressure range of 22.1-26.8 MPa and inlet temperature range of 38-474°C. The parametric trend of the flow rate was investigated, and the experimental data were compared with the predictions of the homogeneous equilibrium model, the Bernoulli correlation, and the models used in the reactor safety analysis code RELAP5/MOD3.3. It is concluded that in the near or beyond pseudo-critical region, thermal-dynamic equilibrium is dominant, and at a lower temperature, choking does not occur. The onset of the choking condition is not predicted reasonably by the RELAP5 code.

Key words： critical flow; supercritical water-cooled reactor(SCWR); reactor safety; loss of coolant accident(LOCA)

Cite this article

Yuzhou CHEN , Chunsheng YANG , Shuming ZHANG , Minfu ZHAO , Kaiwen DU , Xu CHENG . Experimental study of critical flow of water at supercritical pressure[J]. Frontiers in Energy, 2009 , 3(2) : 175 -180 . DOI: 10.1007/s11708-009-0029-6

Acknowledgements

The present study was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (No. 2007CB209800) and the Coordinated Research Project of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA Research contract No. 14469/R0).
Notation
Ddiameter/mm
Gmass flux/(kg·m-2·s-1)
hspecific enthalpy/(J·kg-1)
Llength/mm
ppressure/MPa
rradius/mm
sspecific entropy/( J·kg-1·K-1)
Ttemperature/CC
TPCpseudo-critical temperature/CC
vspecific volume/(m3·kg-1 )
xquality
ρdensity/( kg·m-3 )
Subscript
b back, bulk
crcritical
e equilibrium
gvapor
lliquid
M measurement
0inlet
Pprediction
tthrouat

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DOI

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