Development and application of the global rainbow refractometry for the study of heat and mass transfers in a spray

During the course of an hypothetical severe accident in a Pressure Water Reactor (PWR), hydrogen produced by the degradation and oxidation of the reactor core and high pressure water vapor can be released into the reactor containment. The repartition of the hydrogen in the reactor containment is then dependent of the forced (mixed or natural) convection flows which will be established. This type of accidental scenario will lead then to the pressurization of the reactor containment and to a potential risk of hydrogen combustion, able to prejudice to the integrity of the reactor. One of the means of PWR safety, called spraying, consists to release cold water sprays in the reactor containment, with the aim to make its internal pressure and its temperature decrease, on account of the condensation of water vapor on the injected water droplets. Moreover, the spraying leads to a mixing of the gaseous mixture containing air, water vapor and hydrogen, and contributes to make the hydrogen local concentration decreased. The TOSQAN experiment, developed at the IRSN, allows to reproduce the thermal-hydraulic conditions which represent accidental sequences able to happen in a PWR. In the frame of the current program consecrated to the spraying study, an innovating optical technique has been implemented on the TOSQAN experiment to finely characterize the mass and heat transfers between a spray and the surrounding atmosphere. This work gives into details the development of the global rainbow technique which allows to measure, in a non intrusive way, the temperature of the droplets during their fall. This technique has been coupled with others optical diagnoses such as the spontaneous Raman diffusion spectrometry, the PIV (Particle Image Velocimetry) and the implementation imagery, to respectively measure the water vapor parts as well as the velocities and the droplets sizes. The obtained experimental results have led to a global and local analysis of the interaction between the spraying droplets and the air/vapor mixture. This analysis reveals the physical phenomena happening during the spraying, that is to say the water vapor condensation on the droplets and their evaporation. Moreover, the coupling of the different techniques allows to validate the model of mass and heat transfers introduced in the ACACIA code. (O.M.)