Numerical simulation of two-phase flow behavior in Venturi scrubber by interface tracking method

Highlights: • Self-priming occur because of pressure balance between inside and outside of throat is confirmed. • VS has similar flow with a Venturi tube except of disturbance and burble flow is considered. • Some of atomization simulated are validated qualitatively by comparison with previous studies. - Abstract: From the viewpoint of protecting a containment vessel of light water reactor and suppressing the diffusion of radioactive materials from a light water reactor, it is important to develop the device which allows a filtered venting of contaminated high pressure gas. In the filtered venting system that used in European reactors, so called Multi Venturi scrubbers System is used to realize filtered venting without any power supply. This system is able to define to be composed of Venturi scrubbers (VS) and a bubble column. In the VS, scrubbing of contaminated gas is promoted by both gas releases through the submerged VS and gas-liquid contact with splay flow formed by liquid suctioned through a hole provided by the pressure difference between inner and outer regions of a throat part of the VS. However, the scrubbing mechanism of the self-priming VS including effects of gas mass flow rate and shape of the VS are understood insufficiently in the previous studies. Therefore, we started numerical and experimental study to understand the detailed two-phase flow behavior in the VS. In this paper, to understand the VS operation characteristics for the filtered venting, we performed numerical simulations of two-phase flow behavior in the VS. In the first step of this study, we perform numerical simulations of supersonic flow by the TPFIT to validate the applicability of the TPFIT for high velocity flow like flow in the VS. In the second step, numerical simulation of two-phase flow behavior in the VS including self-priming phenomena. As the results, dispersed flow in the VS was reproduced in the numerical simulation, as same as the visualization experiments.