A Study on the Shell Wall Thinning by Flow Acceleration Corrosion and Mitigation Plan and Design Modification of a Feedwater Heater Impingement Baffle

Feedwater heaters of many nuclear power plants have recently experienced severe wall thinning damage, which will increase as operating time progresses. Several nuclear power plants in Korea have experienced wall thinning damage in the area around the impingement baffle inside feedwater heater installed downstream of the turbine extraction stream line. At that point, the extract steam from the turbine is two phase fluid at high temperature, high pressure, and high speed. Since it flows to reverse direction after impinging the impingement baffle, the shell wall of feedwater heaters may be affected by flow-accelerated corrosion. In this paper, to compare degree of shell wall thinning mitigation rate to squared type with mitigation rate of other type baffle plate, four different types of impingement baffle plate-squared, curved, mitigating type and multi-hole type-applied inside the shell. With these comparison data, this paper describes operation of experiments and numerical analysis which is composed similar condition with real feed water heater. And flow visualization is operated for verification of experiments and numerical analysis. In conclusion, this study shows that mitigating type and multi-hole type baffle plate are more effective than other baffle plate about prevention of pressure concentration and pressure value decrease.