The role of sludge and fouling on local concentration processes in PWR steam generators

A detailed model of the transport processes in heated crevices is used to understand the role of corrosion product deposits on local concentration processes in PWR steam generators (SG). The model describes the heat, mass and momentum transfer processes which occur in the porous deposits found in tube support and tube sheet crevices and in the sludge pile on top of the tube sheet. The model is used to predict the concentration of a given specie in the liquid pore solution at steady-state, as a function of time, and may be readily expanded to multi-component solutions by the use of chemical thermodynamic models. In a previous paper the authors investigated the role of SG design and SG operating parameters on the concentration process. In this paper, several parametric studies were performed to investigate the sensitivity of the local concentration process to the corrosion product properties