ICONE19-43328 PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF CYCLONE SEPARATOR AND ITS OPTIMIZATION

Primary separators in pressurized water reactors (PWRs), cyclone separators, separate most water from vapor-water two-phase mixture, which is important to safety and economics of nuclear power plants. To improve the performance of cyclone separators, we propose new structures including inlet impeller, porosity and conical angle of the chamber wall. Aiming at the new structures, this paper analyzes separation efficiency and pressure drop experimentally in air-water two-phase flows. Results show that separation efficiency and pressure drop have always opposite trends but with similar transition boundaries under all the new structures. Each of the structural parameters has effect on separator performance, but none of the trends is monotonical as phase velocity increasing. The comprehensive performance is determined by separator structure as well as flow patterns. From the investigations in this paper, it is promising to deeply understand the separation mechanism and further to provide enough data to design large-scaled separators of CAP1400.