Experimental research on aerosol scrubbing characteristics under steam-air mixture submerged jet condition

The occurrence of severe accidents in nuclear power plants may lead to the leakage of radioactive aerosol. And the scrubbing efficiency of aerosol contained in the air-steam mixture submerged jet is important for assessing the radioactivity in the containment during a severe accident. Several experiments were carried out to analyze the effect of inlet pressure, aerosol diameter, submergence, and steam fraction on the scrubbing efficiency of aerosol in the jet regime. Then, the scrubbing effects of steam and different flow regimes under submerged jet conditions were investigated by comparing the experimental results. The scrubbing efficiency increased with the increase of the aerosol diameter in the air jet regime while the most penetrating region of the aerosol in the steam-air mixture jet regime is 0.2–0.4 μm. When the gas flow characteristic is subcritical flow, as the inlet pressure increases, the scrubbing efficiency increases rapidly. When the critical flow is reached, the inertial effect was the dominant factor in aerosol scrubbing due to the sufficient gas velocity, the scrubbing efficiency under different steam fractions is close to 100%. The scrubbing efficiency increases with the increase of the steam fraction, which may be caused by the increase of the temperature gradient field under subcritical flow conditions. Additionally, the increase the submergence can increase the residence time and improve the scrubbing efficiency. However, due to the decrease of the gas velocity during the gas floating, the scrubbing efficiency in the flow region of the same height is gradually decreasing.