Drop Coagulation in Cross-Over Pipe Flows of Wet Steam

Abstract

A numerical technique is developed for predicting the evolution of drop-size spectra in turbulent, two-phase pipe flows. While relevant to many chemical engineering processes, it is applied here to the crossover pipes of a nuclear wet-steam turbine. Valid expressions for turbulent coagulation rate in the cross-over pipes are available only for drops below about 10 μm diameter in the core flow, and for those exceeding about 20 μm near the pipe wall. Using these expressions, it is found that the rapid formation of large drops in the core allows prediction for only a small fraction of the typical residence time in the pipe, but near the wall the volume median diameter of an initial 20 μm monodispersion can double in 100 ms. Further work is required to validate the technique and extend it to handle the intervening ranges of drop size and turbulence parameters.