Numerical Approach to the Safety Evaluation of Sodium—Water Reaction

Abstract

A numerical simulation method of multi-dimensional and multi-phase reacting flow (SERAPHIM code) has been developed to evaluate the sodium-water reaction (SWR) phenomena in a steam generator of liquid metal fast reactor (LMFR). A compressible multi-fluid and one-pressure model is adopted and pressure and velocity fields are updated simultaneously by the HSMAC method. Two types of reaction models are considered; one is a surface reaction and the other is a gas-phase reaction. The surface reaction model assumes that water vapor reacts with the liquid sodium at the gas-liquid interface. If chemical reaction heating is large enough, liquid sodium is vaporized resulting in a gas-phase reaction. In the surface reaction, the reaction rate is assumed to be infinitely large. Several overall reaction equations are taken into account in the gas-phase reaction and the reaction rates are described in the form of the Arrhenius law. In the present study, adequacy of the analytical procedures for compressible multi-phase flow is validated by a benchmark calculation of the Edwards pipe blowdown problem. As a numerical example, two- and three-dimension analyses of the single-tube geometry and the two-dimension analyses of the 43-tubes geometry are carried out. It is concluded that the numerical quantification of the SWR accident by the SERAPHIM code is practicable and further use of the SERAPHIM code is useful to resolve safety issues immanent in the SWR.

KEYWORDS:

• computer fluid dynamics
• sodium-water reaction
• safety analysis
• ab initio molecular orbital method
• multi-phase analysis
• multi-fluid model
• one-pressure model
• HSMAC method