The Quest for Prototypical Conditions in the Phebus-FP Containment

Abstract

In the Phebus experiments fission products and structural materials from a realistic source will enter the containment vessel in the form of aerosol particles. One of the objectives of the test series is to see whether steam condensation onto these aerosols will influence the rate at which they are removed from the atmosphere. The relative humidity is the most important parameter in determining this condensation rate and this paper describes at tempts to specify boundary conditions to the vessel that will achieve a predetermined humidity. Both calculations and experiments are described. The calculations, made with different computer codes, highlight the deficiencies of these codes and their sensitivity to the choice of heat and mass transfer correlations. The experimental results indicate that the well-mixed hypothesis may not be justified.