Progress Report on Model Development for the Transport of Aerosol through Microchannels

Abstract

This report summarizes the progress in the development of a phenomenological model of aerosol transport, deposition, and plugging through microchannels. The purpose of this effort is to introduce to a user community-involving researchers, regulators, and industry-a generic, reliable numerical model for the prediction of aerosol transport while accounting for potential deposition and plugging of the leak paths. In that regard, a graphical user interface (GUI) was generated by integrating the individual MATLAB scripts that make up the model and adding additional features to aid the user's general understanding of the problem. This report focuses on the model development and features included. Furthermore, predictions from the GUI are compared with experimental data (Sandia, 2018) for validation. The strength of the GUI is the ability of a user to plug in basic parameters, such as the initial pressure conditions and canister model specifications, to obtain a first-principles approximation of vital information such as the blowdown pressure differential, aerosol penetration, and deposition as a function of time. The user can obtain this without the know-how of the underlying MATLAB scripts, enabling the model to be readily applied by regulators, industry, and shareholders to reduce the uncertainty in off-site radiological consequence evaluations.