Pressure drop and Void fraction of steam-water two-phase flow at high pressure

Liu, W.; Tamai, Hidesada*; Takase, Kazuyuki

For a steam generator in a commercialized sodium-cooled Fast Breeder Reactor (FBR), flow instability in the water side is one of the most important items need research. As the first step of the research, thermal-hydraulic experiments using water as the test fluid were performed under high pressure conditions at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) by using a circular tube. Void fraction, pressure drop and heat transfer coefficient data were obtained under 15, 17, and 18 MPa. This paper discusses the steam-water pressure drop and void fraction. Using the obtained data, we evaluated existing correlations for void fraction and two-phase flow multipliers. As a result, the drift flux model implemented in the TRAC-BF1 code was confirmed to suitably predict the void fraction well, under the present high pressure conditions. For the two-phase flow multiplier, the Chisholm correlation and the homogeneous model were confirmed to be the best under the present high-pressure conditions.