Assessment of GOTHIC and TRACE codes against selected PANDA experiments on a Passive Containment Condenser

摘要

Typical passive safety systems for ALWRs (Advanced Light Water Reactors) rely on the condensation of steam to remove the decay heat from the core or the containment. In the present paper the three-dimensional containment code GOTHIC and the one-dimensional system code TRACE are compared on the calculation of a variety of phenomena characterizing the response of a passive condenser submerged in a boiling pool. The investigation addresses the conditions of interest for the Passive Containment Cooling System (PCCS) proposed for the ESBWR (Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor). The analysis of selected separate effect tests carried out on a PCC (Passive Containment Condenser) unit in the PANDA large-scale thermal-hydraulic facility is presented to assess the code predictions. Both pure steam conditions (operating pressure of 3 bar, 6 bar and 9 bar) and the effect on the condensation heat transfer of non-condensable gases heavier than steam (air) and lighter than steam (helium) are considered. The role of the secondary side (pool side) heat transfer on the condenser performance is examined too. In general, this study shows that both the GOTHIC and TRACE codes are able to reasonably predict the heat transfer capability of the PCC as well as the influence of non-condensable gas on the system. A slight underestimation of the condenser performance is obtained with both codes. For those tests where the experimental and simulated efficiencies agree better the possibility of compensating errors among different parts of the heat transfer models is outlined. Besides, the pool side heat transfer coefficient is indicated to differ between GOTHIC and TRACE, revealing that the model implemented in TRACE might be more accurate. Finally, both codes deviate more from the experiments for the tests with helium, which is explained by the emerging of a complex circulatory flow pattern in the experiments that the models fail to predict.