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Article history:
Received 15 May 2013
Received in revised form 30 October 2013
Accepted 2 November 2013
a b s t r a c t
The main objective of this paper is to experimentally study the effect of two-phase ow on owaccelerated corrosion (FAC) downstream an orice. FAC is a major safety and reliability issue affecting
carbon-steel piping in nuclear and fossil power plants. This is because of its pipe wall wearing and thinning effects that could lead to sudden and sometimes catastrophic failures, as well as a huge economic
loss. In the present study, FAC wear of carbon-steel piping was simulated experimentally by circulating
airwater mixtures through hydrocal (CaSO4 1/2H2 O) test sections at liquid supercial Reynolds number, Re = 20,000, and different air mass ow rates. Experiments were performed for a test section with
different orice to pipe diameter ratios (do /D = 0.25, 0.5 and 0.74). The observed ow patterns were compared with the available ow pattern maps. Surface wear patterns downstream the orices were also
analyzed. The maximum FAC wear was found to occur at approximately 25 pipe diameters downstream
of the orice. The obtained results were found to be consistent with those from a single-phase ow study
reported earlier. Moreover, FAC was found to depend on the relative values of the mixture mass quality
and the volumetric void fraction. Lower values of FAC wear rate were obtained for higher values of mass
quality. A modied correlation is developed in order to predict FAC wear rate downstream of the piperestricting orice with an average RMS accuracy of 10%. However, the location of maximum wear rate
is well predicted. The current study is considered as an integrated effort to develop guidelines to FAC
engineers in power plants in order to prepare more reliable plant inspection scope.
2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Flow accelerated corrosion (FAC) material degradation in carbon
steel piping systems represents one of the major problems in many
industries including nuclear power plants, oil and gas industries,
desalination plants, and many others because of its detrimental
effect on various piping components. It is widely known that the
severe FAC damage normally occurs in tees, elbows, downstream
Corresponding author. Tel.: +966 3 860 7507; fax: +966 3 860 2949.
E-mail addresses: ahmedw@kfupm.edu.sa,
wael.ahmed@gmail.com (W.H. Ahmed).
0029-5493/$ see front matter 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nucengdes.2013.11.073
of control valves, ow elements, reducers or orices. The wall thinning caused by FAC in piping systems may lead to catastrophic
failures of system components and may also result in serious fatalities as reported by Ahmed et al. (2012). Accurate prediction of FAC
rate in a specic application is one of the very complicated problems since it requires detailed investigation of both the soluble iron
production (Fe2+ ) at the oxide/water interface and transfer of the
corrosion products to the bulk ow across the diffusion boundary layer. Consequently, the pipe wall thinning rate due to FAC
depends on a complex interaction of several parameters such as
material composition, water chemistry, and hydrodynamic. Ahmed
et al. (2012) indicated that a signicant research has been conducted on investigating the effect of uid chemical properties on
W.H. Ahmed et al. / Nuclear Engineering and Design 267 (2014) 3443
Nomenclature
A
C
Deff
D
J
MTC
Q
Re
Sc
Sh
Shfd
x
z
Subscripts
b
bulk uid value
eff
effective value
wall
w
35
dH
L
(1)
Q 1x
AL
(2)
jg
CO j + Vgj
(3)
where j and jg are the mixture and vapor volumetric uxes, CO is
the phase distribution coefcient which depends on the two-phase
ow pattern, and Vgj is the vaporgas drift velocity.
Another extensive work carried out on modeling FAC in two
phase ow is developed by Kuo-Tong et al. (1998), who attempted
to predict FAC damage locations on high pressure (HP) turbine
exhaust steam line. The choice of high pressure (HP) turbine
exhaust steam line as a case study was based on the plant measured data of pipe thickness which indicates serious FAC problem
under two phase ow conditions. They proposed a mathematical approach to predict FAC using two-phase ow hydrodynamic
models to investigate the impact of the local parameters on FAC
damage. They reported an improvement of the new approach over
the previous methods used because of the involvement of the
multi-dimensional ow characteristics responsible for FAC wear.
Although the method presented provides more accurate value of
FAC wear rate in two-phase ow, however, it requires intensive
modeling and not reasonable for practical calculation. That is why
empirical-based correlations continue to receive a great attention
due to its simplicity and suitability for use in practical applications.
36
W.H. Ahmed et al. / Nuclear Engineering and Design 267 (2014) 3443
(4)
(5)
ShZ
= 1 + AZ 1 + BZ
Shfd
0.66
ReO
0.0165Re0.86
21
(6)
where Shz is the local Sherwood number at a distance (z) downstream each orice, ReO is the orice Reynolds number, A, B are
empirical constants obtained by Krall and Sparrow (1966) and Tagg
et al. (1979), and Shfd is the fully developed Sherwood number far
downstream the orice i.e. in a straight pipe and reported by Berger
and Hue (1977) in the form:
Shfd = 0.0165Re0.86 Sc 0.33
(7)
W.H. Ahmed et al. / Nuclear Engineering and Design 267 (2014) 3443
37
no-wear. This indicates that the measured wear in the present tests
were entirely due to mass transfer and that the hydrocal test sections are not susceptible to mechanical wear. The test section is
prepared by mixing plaster of pairs with deionized water under
vacuum for 2 min to avoid air bubbles and to decrease the porosity
of the nal hydrocal section. The water to plaster ratio was used for
all tests after several trials to obtain reliable test sections.
The overall mass transfer over the entire hydrocal test section is
determined by measuring the electrical conductivity of the circulating water within the ow loop using EU Tech-PC300 meter with
an accuracy of 1%. The operating principle of this technique was
explained in detail by Ahmed et al. (2012). The amount of hydrocal dissolution in the water is obtained through a calibration curve
relating the water conductivity to the amount of dissolved hydrocal. In the present experiments, a maximum concentration of 4%
on volume basis is found to represent the limit where saturation is
reached and the conductivity remains constant. Temperature measurements were used to compensate for the changes in the water
conductivity with temperature. The water conductivity measurements are recorded every 2 min during each experimental run to
determine the overall wear rate within the test section.
The local wear measurements were obtained using FARO-Axis
CMM with Laser Scanner D100 attached to laser power source
of Class 2M. The measured wear is calculated by measuring the
difference between the actual corroded scanned surface and a
CAD model representing the new pipe without corrosion. Wear
Oric
Plaster of Pairs
P1
Pressure Taps
Acrylic Tubing
P2
P3
Note:
Plaster of Pairs Sec on is replaced by acrylic
tubing for ow visualiza on downstream of the
oric
38
W.H. Ahmed et al. / Nuclear Engineering and Design 267 (2014) 3443
Fig. 5. SEM of macropores present in the hydrocal test section before testing.
Fig. 6. Inlet ow patterns on Taitel and Duckler map for 1 in. horizontal pipeline.
W.H. Ahmed et al. / Nuclear Engineering and Design 267 (2014) 3443
(a)
0.16
39
d/D = 0.5
Re1ph = 20,000
0.08
0.06
0.04
0.02
0
0
10
30
20
40
50
60
70
Time, t, (minutes)
(b)
0.14
d/D = 0.74
Re1ph = 20,000
0.12
0.1
0.08
0.06
0.04
0.02
0
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Time, t, (minutes)
Fig. 7. Hydrocal concentration variation with time under both single and two phase ow experiments: (a) orice to pipe diameter ratio of 0.5, (b) orice to pipe diameter
ratio of 0.74.
0.012
d/D = 0.25
0.01
d/D = 0.5
d/D=0.74
0.008
0.006
0.004
0.002
0
0
0.001
0.002
0.003
0.004
0.005
Mass quality, x
Fig. 8. Variation of hydrocal wear rate downstream the orice with inlet mass
quality for all geometries under both single and two phase ow experiments.
40
W.H. Ahmed et al. / Nuclear Engineering and Design 267 (2014) 3443
Fig. 10. Wear pattern downstream of the orice at different mass qualities
(do /D = 0.5).
Fig. 11. FAC wear rate prole in the hydrocal test section downstream the orice.
W.H. Ahmed et al. / Nuclear Engineering and Design 267 (2014) 3443
41
25
Single phase water (x = 0)
20
15
"Modified Correlation (x=0.001)"
"Modified Correlation (x=0.002)"
"Modified Correlation (x=0.003)"
10
10
12
Z/D
Fig. 12. Variation of overall wear rate downstream the orice with inlet volumetric
void fraction for all geometries under both single and two-phase ow experiments.
As observed by Fossa et al. (2006), the increase in the void fraction causes a signicant decrease in the liquid level (in comparison
with fully developed inlet ow conditions) just downstream the
orice. This consequently led to a reduction in the overall FAC wear
rates in the region downstream the orice. In spite of the increase
in the liquid turbulence downstream of the orice, the mass transfer decreases dramatically because of the increase of the gas phase
contact area with the pipe wall. This has been conrmed using the
ow visualization experiments as shown in Fig. 9. It is clear from
the gure that liquid contact area with the pipe wall becomes less
as the mass quality increases.
For the same mass quality, the liquid ow downstream smaller
orice diameter is subjected to higher deceleration compared to
larger orice diameter, however, the pipe downstream remain to
Fig. 13. Comparison between the experimental data and the correlations for FAC
wear rate downstream the orice (do /D = 0.5).
Fig. 14. Surface morphology at the location of maximum wear downstream of the orice (do /D = 0.5) at different mass qualities.
42
W.H. Ahmed et al. / Nuclear Engineering and Design 267 (2014) 3443
decrease as the mass quality increases due to the low mass transfer in the gaseous phase. For single phase ow, the peak value
slightly decreases by about 6% and 42% for x = 0.002 and x = 0.003,
respectively. The location of the maximum FAC wear rate remains
unchanged.
The increase in local liquid velocity has been reported to signicantly affect FAC wear rate downstream the orice under
single-phase ow condition (Chexal et al., 1996). In the present
study, the effect of increasing the void fraction downstream the
orice outweighs the corresponding effect of increasing the local
Reynolds number of the liquid phase and the overall wear rate
decreases as shown in Fig. 12. Hence, the FAC wear rate downstream
the orice is reduced for the case of two-phase ow in comparison
with the corresponding single-phase ow condition. However, the
location of the maximum wear remains the same due to the effect
of higher turbulence in this region.
The data presented in Fig. 12 are used to correlate the effect
of two-phase mass quality on the non-dimensional mass transfer
coefcient previously correlated by Coney (1980). A modied correlation of existing Coney (1980) correlation is proposed to predict
the mass transfer coefcient in the form:
ShZ
= 1 + AZ 1 + BZ
Shfd
Re0.66
O
0.0165Re0.86
21
f (x)
(8)
References
where f (x) is a function of mass quality and obtained by performing regression analysis of the data presented in Fig. 10 for the
same diameter ratio (do /D) with a correlation coefcient R = 0.87. It
should be noted that the mass quality multiplier expressed in Eq. (9)
is valid for 0 < x < 0.1. As shown in Fig. 13, the modied correlation
is used to calculate the FAC wear rate from the non-dimensional
mass coefcient downstream of the orice as expressed in Eq. (8)
along with the mass quality multiplier expressed as:
f (x) = (1 x0.05 )
(9)
W.H. Ahmed et al. / Nuclear Engineering and Design 267 (2014) 3443
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