A PWR design incorporates a passive auxiliary feedwater system equipped with one passive condensation heat exchanger (PCHX) which consists of inclined V-shaped tube bundles submerged in a water pool of which the top is open to the atmosphere. During the PCHX operation, saturated steam flows into the PCHX where steam is condensed inside of the tubes by cooling the outer side with the pool water. Then, the condensate flows out passively by gravity. Because the thermal-hydraulic characteristics in the PCHX determine the condensation mass rate and the possibility of thermal stratification-induced fatigue of the pool tank wall, system instability and waterhammer, it is important to understand the phase change flow in the PCHX. In this paper, the complex phase change heat transfer and multi-phase flow in a PCHX tube model were numerically simulated. The single fluid multi-component flow model with the equilibrium phase change model was employed for the condensation phase change flow inside the tube and the two-fluid model with the wall boiling model and the equilibrium phase change model was used for the boiling-induced natural convection outside the tube in the pool. Based on the present numerical simulation, the characteristics of the heat transfer and flow in the PCHX are discussed and illustrated for some typical results.

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