Investigation on Hydrodynamic Cavitation of a Restriction Orifice and Static Mixer on Crud-like Deposits

Axial Offset Anomaly (AOA) referring to an unexpected neutron flux depression is also known as Crud Induced Power Shift (CIPS). Fuel assemblies removed from an AOA core have shown a thick porous deposition layer of crud on fuel clad surface. The deposition layer was induced by precipitation reactions of both boron species and crud during sub-cooled nucleate boiling. Therefore, to resolve the AOA issues, a fuel cleaning technology using ultrasonic cavitation has been developed by EPRI and applied to the domestic NPPs by KNF. However, the performance of crud removal during maintenance of NPPs is known to be not enough. Hydrodynamic cavitation is the process of vaporization, bubble generation and bubble implosion which occurs in a flowing liquid as a result of decrease and subsequent increase in pressure. Hydrodynamic cavitation generates shock pressure of a few tens MPa due to bubble collapse like the cavitation generated by Ultrasonics. It is well known that the cavitation can erode the metal surface. The idea of the current study is that such energetic cavitation bubble collapses could help to remove the crud from the fuel assembly. Therefore, the current study first investigates effects of hydrodynamic cavitation occurred from a single hole orifice and static mixer fundamentally