Numerical prediction of subcooled wall boiling in the secondary side of SG tubes coupled with primary coolant

Steam generator (SG) is the heat exchanger used to transfer heat generated by the nuclear reactor core to the secondary side. In this paper, the two-fluid model combining with inter-phase heat and mass transfer model, inter-phase momentum transfer model, and RPI wall boiling model proposed by Kurul and Podowski (1991) was applied to solve the local flow and heat transfer of subcooled flow boiling in the secondary side of SG tube bundles coupled with the primary side by using ANSYS CFX 12.0. The subcooled nucleate boiling phenomenon and the coupled heat transfer between the SG primary side and secondary side were obtained. Also, the effects of tube support plate (TSP) and the different inlet subcooling on the thermal-hydraulic characteristics of SG were studied. The model adopted here was validated by using the published experiment and was in reasonable agreement with experimental data. The numerical results reasonable revealed the subcooled flow boiling occurred in the SG secondary side and the distributions of key parameters around TSP, elucidating that this model can provide useful information to the design of the steam generator.