Study of Heat Mass and Mass Transfers in a Spray for Containment Application: Analysis of the Influence of the Spray Mass Flow Rate

During the course of a hypothetical accident in a nuclear power plant, spray might be activated in order to reduce static pressure in the containment. To have a better understanding of the heat and mass transfers between a spray and the surrounding confined gas, the IRSN has developed the TOSQAN experiment. This article is devoted to analyse the influence of the injected spray mass flow rate on the thermal-hydraulic of spray tests. In order to perform this analysis, two other tests are performed with exactly the same boundary and initial conditions, except the spray mass flow rate that ranges from 10 to 50 g.s⁻¹. First, the scenario of these three tests and the associated results used for this analysis are presented. Then, we focus our analysis on the inter-comparison of the thermal-hydraulic behaviour induced by spray mass flow rates variations. This inter-comparison is divided into two parts: a global and a local one.