Steady-state performances and scaling analyses for an open flashing-driven natural circulation system

Highlights: •An open natural circulation system is designed for the PCCS. •Steady-state behaviors of single- and flashing-induced two-phase flow are studied. •The effects on the resistance distributions of single- and two-phase flow are different. •Optimal structural parameters are obtained by sensitivity analysis. •Scaling analyses are conducted for the economy and penetration considerations. -- Abstract: Simulating investigations are carried out to study the steady-state performances, the pressure resistance distributions and the scaling methods of the single-phase and flashing-induced two-phase flow in the open natural circulation system, which is designed for the passive containment cooling system. The results show that the steady-state mass flow rate changes with the heat transfer regularly both in the single-phase and flashing-induced two-phase flow under a certain inlet subcooling. From the sensitivity analysis, it can be found that the riser height only has impact on the single-phase flow but has little influence on the flashing-driven two-phase flow. Both increasing the diameters of the riser and downcomer can enhance the flow and heat transfer in sing-phase and two-phase flow when keeping the structure of the heat exchanger unchanged, but the influence degree for each flow type is different. The flow resistance distributions of the loops under different flow modes have been studied to provide the foundation for improving the heat transfer capacity by choosing the structural parameters reasonably. The pressure resistance distribution of the steady single-phase flow only relates to the geometrical, but the pressure resistance distribution of the two-phase flow relates both to the pipe diameters and to the external conditions. The acceleration pressure resistance in the riser section is the main resistance under the higher-quality two-phase conditions. Therefore, the influence of the riser diameter on the flashing-induced two-phase flow is far greater than that of downcomer diameter and the most effective method to improve the two-phase flow and heat transfer is to increase the diameter of the riser. Finally, the scaling analysis is performed for the penetration and economy considerations after selecting the optimal dimensions. The scaling of the cold and hot sections is considered separately to insure the driven force of the system unchanged, and different scaling criterions are given for the single-phase and flashing-induced two-phase flow according to the analyses of the pressure resistance distributions. The results show that the scaling criterion of the two-phase flow can deal with the scaling problem accurately both in the single-phase and two-phase flow. However, the scaling criterion of the single-phase flow only can solve the single-phase scaling problem, but it will overestimate the operating results in the scaling model.