CFD modelling of condensation of vapour in the pressurized PPOOLEX facility

The behaviour of a pressure suppression containment is studied experimentally and by performing CFD calculations. The experiments have been performed with the PPOOLEX test facility, which is a scaled-down two-compartment model of a pressure suppression containment of a BWR. In the experiments, vapour is blown into the drywell compartment initially filled with air. When the pressure increases, the mixture of air and vapour flows through the vent pipe into the water pool of the wetwell compartment.
CFD simulation of the first 100 seconds of the experiment has been performed by using the Euler-Euler two-phase model of FLUENT code. In wall condensation, the condensing water forms a film layer on the wall surface, which is modelled by mass transfer from the gas phase to the liquid water phase in the near-wall grid cell. The direct-contact condensation in the wetwell is modelled with a heat transfer coefficient.