Development of a test facility for analyzing transients in supercritical water-cooled reactors by fractional scaling analysis

The feasibility of performing experiments using water under supercritical conditions is limited by technical and financial difficulties. These difficulties can be overcome by using model fluids that are characterized by feasible supercritical conditions, that is, lower critical pressure and critical temperature. Experimental investigations are normally used to determine the conditions under which model fluids reliably represent supercritical fluids under steady-state conditions. A fluid-to-fluid scaling approach has been proposed to determine the model fluids that represent supercritical fluids in a transient state. Recently, a similar technique known as fractional scaling analysis was developed to establish the conditions under which experiments can be performed using models that represent transients in prototypes. This paper presents a fractional scaling analysis application to determine parameters for a test facility in which transient conditions in supercritical water-cooled reactors are simulated by using carbon dioxide as a model fluid, whose critical point conditions are more feasible than those of water. Similarity is obtained between water (prototype) and carbon dioxide (model) by depressurization in a simple vessel. The main parameters required for the construction of a future test facility are obtained using the proposed method.