Developments in Power Fluidics for Application in Nuclear Plant

Abstract

Fluidic systems have been developed for handling toxic and corrosive fluids in U.K. nuclear plant. Recent work carried out in the CEFT department in collaboration with UKAEA, Risley, which has led to the installation of plant hardware is described. The systems include: single and double-acting pumps with no-moving-part driving units, experiments on multistage pumps and the effect of temperature on pumping rate, fluidic control of mixer-settlers, and pulse-columns. Also described are applications in ventilation plant control and the effect of argon controlling air in a vortex amplifier.

Experimental Characteristics of Pneumatic Pulse Jet Pumping Systems with a Venturi-Like Reverse Flow Diverter

“…Although this pumping system is not the most efficient compared to one with dual-RFDs (Tippetts and Swithenbank, 1977;Tippetts et al, 1981), it is extremely reliable because of its simplicity and suitability for storage tanks in cases where the free space available is very narrow. The DV used was a cylinder with an inner diameter of 160 mm and was 845 mm in height.…”

Performance curve available for non-steady flow through Venturi-like reverse flow diverter

“…Fig. 1 shows a schematic diagram of an RFD pump, and its detailed working principles and procedure are given in the literature [10,11,[13][14][15]. RFD pumps are briefly introduced here.…”

Experimental study on the hydraulic characteristics of vortex diodes

“…Vortex diode pump is a new transportation system superior to general one mainly as the absence of moving parts and maintenance [1]. Sheffield University, Cardiff University and British Nuclear Fuel Company have developed a two-phase pulse vortex diode transportation system for transferring spent fuels of reprocessing in nuclear industry depending on large pressure drop difference between the reverse and forward conditions [2].…”