Experimental Research on the Retention Characteristics of Hydrophilic and Hydrophobic Aerosols in Jet Regime

Abstract

Aerosol is one of the main forms of fission products in nuclear reactor accidents, which are derived from direct leakage of solid fission products and homogeneous and heterogeneous nucleation of gaseous fission products. Pool scrubbing may reduce the leakage of radioactive aerosol, and it is vital for the prediction of radioactivity to accurately grasp the retention efficiency. In this paper, experimental research on aerosol retention characteristics in jet regime was carried out. Titanium dioxide and cesium iodide were used to simulate radioactive aerosols with different hydrophilicity, and the retention efficiency under different inlet pressure and aerosol size was obtained. The results show that the retention efficiency of aerosol increases significantly while the inlet pressure increases from 43 kPa to 110 kPa. While the inlet pressure is higher than 110 kPa, the retention efficiency still increases with the increase of inlet pressure, although the increasing trend is not obvious. The most easily permeable range of cesium iodide aerosol is smaller than that of titania aerosol, and the retention efficiency of cesium iodide aerosol is always higher than that of titania aerosol, which may be caused by hydrophilicity. However, with the increase of stokes number, the difference of retention efficiency between the two aerosols gradually decreases. The difference between different aerosols was analyzed in this paper and it was found that the influence of hydrophilicity was negatively correlated with stokes number. The results of this research can be used to assist the validation of pool scrubbing model.