A condensation experiment in the presence of noncondensables in a vertical tube of a passive containment cooling system and its assessment with RELAP5/MOD3.2
A condensation experiment in the presence of non-condensable gas in a vertical tube of the passive containment cooling system of the CP-1300 is performed. The experimental results show that the heat transfer coefficients (HTCs) increase as the inlet air mass fraction decreases and the inlet saturated steam temperature decreases. However, the dependence of the inlet mixture Reynolds number an the HTC is small for the operating range. An empirical correlation is developed and its predictions are compared with experimental data to show good agreement with the standard deviation of 22.3%. The experimental HTCs are also compared with the predictions from the default and the alternative models used in RELAP5/MOD3.2. The experimental apparatus is modeled with two wall-film condensation models in RELAP5/MOD3.2 and the present model, and simulations are performed for several subtests to be compared with the experimental results. Overall, the simulation results show that the default model of RELAP5/MOD3.2 underpredicts the HTCs, and the alternative model overpredicts them, while the present model predicts them well throughout the condensing tube.