Investigations into the Effect of Mixing on Steam–Water Two-Phase Subsonic Cross-Flow Stability

Abstract

Theoretical and experimental aspects of the project were conducted to investigate the effect of the mixing of a swirling steam jet into cross-flowing water. It was observed that based on the theoretical adiabatic estimations for the equilibrium temperature of steam–water mixing and by varying Psteam = 1–3 bar, Pwater = 1 bar and RPM = 60–300 around 97% (experimentally compared to the area it has at initial condition) and 85% (CFD study compared to the area it has at initial condition), an increase in the area under the influence of perfect adiabatic mixing was found. A virtual cover over the steam duct was seen. The area of this virtual cover based on the void fraction of swirling steam had a weak relationship with the total area of the region, inhibiting the perfect mixing for which an analytical relationship had been developed. The effect of mixing on the stability of swirling steam–water cross-flows was overall more than twice that of the effect on the area under the influence of the stability profile protrusions. Thus, an overall rise in inlet pressure contributed to improper mixing, whereas a rise in the RPM contributed to proper mixing inside a fixed window of observations. The effect of spatial scaling of a swirling steam trajectory on mixing in cross-flowing water was also investigated across the vertical plane. Also, the scaling of the vertical trajectories of the swirling steam jets under all operating conditions resulted in merging the regions of perfect mixing to some extent. Thus, the area under the influence of perfect mixing was reduced to around 3–4.7% under all operating conditions with scaling. This type of scaling has enormous potential for the characterization of larger fluid domains in environmental and process engineering studies.