An Experimental Investigation of Two-Phase Frictional Pressure Drop in Straight-Tube Steam Generator Used in SFR

Due to the presence of sodium, it is a challenging task to achieve the reliable and safe operation of steam generators in a sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR). Water flow oscillations in a two-phase flow system worsen the tube integrity. An accurate prediction of two-phase pressure drop is essential in designing steam generators to operate in a stable regime. Toward this, experiments have been carried out on an industrial-size 19-tube model sodium-heated steam generator of 5.5-MW capacity to understand two-phase pressure drop characteristics at various operating conditions. The measured data are used to estimate the two-phase frictional pressure drop. The concept of a two-phase friction multiplier has been used in the present study. A significant variation in the two-phase frictional multiplier is seen with steam quality, whereas the variation of the two-phase friction multiplier is insignificant at saturated steam condition. Based on the experiments, complemented by computational model, a correlation has been developed for the two-phase frictional multiplier as a function of steam quality for sodium-heated once-through straight-tube steam generators.