Condensation in the presence of noncondensible gases: AP600 containment simulation

The Westinghouse Electric Corporation has designed an advanced pressurized light water reactor, AP600. This reactor is designed with a passive cooling system to remove sensible and decay heat from the containment. The heat removal path involves condensation heat transfer, aided by natural convective forces generated by buoyancy effects. A one-twelfth scale rectangular slice of the proposed reactor containment was constructed at the University of Wisconsin to simulate conditions anticipated from transients and accidents that may occur in a full scale containment vessel under a variety of conditions. Similitude of the test facility was obtained by considering the appropriate dimensionless group for the natural convective process (modified Froude number) and the aspect ratio (H/R) of the containment vessel. An experimental investigation to determine the heat transfer coefficients associated with condensation on a vertical and horizontal cooled wall (located in the scaled test section) at several different inlet steam flow rates and test section temperatures was conducted. In this series of experiments, the non-condensible mass fraction varied between (0.9-0.4) with corresponding mixture temperatures between 60-90 degrees C. The heat transfer coefficients of the top horizontal surface varied from (82-296)W/m2K and the vertical side heat transfer coefficients varied form (70-269)m2K. The results were then compared to boundary layer heat and mass transfer theory by the use of the McAdams correlation for free convection