• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.45 no.6
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• pp.536-546
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• 2007

The nanoparticles have several interesting properties which cannot be shown in their bulk materials because of their high ratio of surface area to volume. They can be used to manufacture the nanostructured materials, the industrial materials, or the catalyst materials etc.. We can prepare nanoparticles of various sizes with high degree of monodispersity by gas phase processes and those particles can be used as raw materials for various advanced functional materials. In this paper, we introduced the aerosol reactors to synthesize nanoparticles by gas phase processes and also analyzed several features of those aerosol reactors and tried to introduce the recent interesting studies on nanoparticle synthesis by gas phase processes.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.6
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• pp.2077-2083
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• 2022

In the unlikely event of core disruptive accident in sodium cooled fast reactors, the reactor containment building would be bottled up with sodium and fission product aerosols. The behavior of these aerosols is crucial to estimate the in-containment source term as a part of nuclear reactor safety analysis. In this work, the evolution of sodium aerosol characteristics (mass concentration and size) is simulated using HAARM-S code. The code is based on the method of moments to solve the integro-differential equation. The code is updated to FORTRAN-77 and run in Microsoft FORTRAN PowerStation 4.0 (on Desktop). The sodium aerosol characteristics simulated by HAARM-S code are compared with the measured values at Aerosol Test Facility. The maximum deviation between measured and simulated mass concentrations is 30% at initial period (up to 60 min) and around 50% in the later period. In addition, the influence of humidity on aerosol size growth for two different aerosol mass concentrations is studied. The measured and simulated growth factors of aerosol size (ratio of saturated size to initial size) are found to be matched at reasonable extent. Since sodium is highly reactive with atmospheric constituents, the aerosol growth factor depends on the hygroscopic growth, chemical transformation and density variations besides coagulation. Further, there is a scope for the improvement of the code to estimate the aerosol dynamics in confined environment.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.48 no.4
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• pp.870-880
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• 2016

A steam generator tube rupture (SGTR) event with a stuck-open safety relief valve constitutes one of the most serious accident sequences in pressurized water reactors (PWRs) because it may create an open path for radioactive aerosol release into the environment. The release may be mitigated by the deposition of fission product particles on a steam generator's (SG's) dry tubes and structures or by scrubbing in the secondary coolant. However, the absence of empirical data, the complexity of the geometry, and the controlling processes have, until recently, made any quantification of retention difficult to justify. As a result, past risk assessment studies typically took little or no credit for aerosol retention in SGTR sequences. To provide these missing data, the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) initiated the Aerosol Trapping In Steam GeneraTor (ARTIST) Project, which aimed to thoroughly investigate various aspects of aerosol removal in the secondary side of a breached steam generator. Between 2003 and 2011, the PSI has led the ARTIST Project, which involved intense collaboration between nearly 20 international partners. This summary paper presents key findings of experimental and analytical work conducted at the PSI within the ARTIST program.

• Particle and aerosol research
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.95-109
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• 2009

A low temperature plasma process has been widely used for semiconductor fabrication and can also be applied for the preparation of solar cell, MEMS or NEMS, but they are notorious in the point of particle contamination. The nano-sized particles can be generated in the low temperature plasma process and they can induce several serious defects on the performance and quality of microelectronic devices and also on the cost of final products. For the preparation of high quality thin films of high efficiency by the low temperature plasma process, it is desirable to increase the deposition rate of thin films with reducing the particle contamination in the plasmas. In this paper, we introduced the studies on the generation and growth of nanoparticles in the low temperature plasmas and tried to introduce the recent interesting studies on nanoparticle generation in the plasma reactors.

• Particle and aerosol research
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.137-154
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• 2014

Prediction of the behavior of radioactive aerosol particles in a containment is of importance for the assessment of the consequences of nuclear power plant severe accidents because most radioactive air pollutants are emitted as aerosol particles upon severe accident. The performance of engineering safety features (ESFs) is also influenced by the characteristics of the aerosol particles. In this article, the characteristics of aerosol particles in reactor containments reported by previous studies were reviewed. The results of the experiments for postulated accidents in test reactors, for aerosol behavior analysis using artificial test aerosols, and for ESF performance evaluation were summarized. The summary of this article will be of use in designing and performance-evaluating ESFs.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.1
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• pp.132-140
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• 2024

In the event of a severe accident in Sodium Cooled Fast Reactors (SFR), the sodium combustion aerosols along with fission product aerosols would migrate to the environment through leak paths of the Reactor Containment Building (RCB) concrete wall under positive pressure. Understanding the characteristics of sodium aerosol transport through concrete leak paths is important as it governs the environmental source term. In this context, experiments are conducted to study the influence of various parameters like pressure, initial mass concentration, leak path diameter, humidity etc., on the transport and deposition of sodium aerosols in straight leak paths of concrete. The leak paths in concrete specimens are prepared by casting and the diameter of the leak path is measured using thermography technique. Aerosol transport experiments are conducted to measure the transported and plugged aerosol mass in the leak paths and corresponding plugging times. The values of differential pressure, aerosol concentration and relative humidity taken for the study are in the ranges 10-15 kPa, 0.65-3.04 g/m³ and 30-90% respectively. These observations are numerically simulated using 1-Dimensional transport equation. The simulated values are compared with the experimental results and reasonable agreement among them is observed. From the safety assessment view of reactor, the approach presented here is conservative as it is with straight leak paths.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.7
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• pp.2373-2379
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• 2023

In sodium systems, leakage is one of the safety concerns; it can cause chemical reactions, which may result in fires. There are contact and non-contact types of leak detectors, and the conventional method of non-contact type detection is by gas sampling. Because of the complexity of this method, there has always been a need for a simple gas sensor, and the resistive-type nanostructure ZnO sensor is a promising option with various advantages. In this study, a ZnO sensor was fabricated, and the concept was tested as a leak detector using a dedicated experiment facility. The experiment results showed distinctive changes in resistance with the presence of sodium aerosol under various conditions. Replacing the conventional gas sampling with the ZnO sensors is expected to enable identification of the leakage location if used as a point-wise instrumentation and to greatly reduce the total cost, making the system simple, light, and effective. For further study, more tests will be performed to evaluate the sensitivity of key parameters under various conditions.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.1
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• pp.125-137
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• 2019

The purpose of this paper is to study the source term behavior after severe accidents by using a semi-kinetic model for simulation and calculation of in-containment activity. The reactor containment specification and the safety features of the containment under different accident conditions play a great role in evaluating the in-containment activity. Assuming in-vessel and instantaneous release of radioactivity into the containment, the behavior of in-containment isotopic activity is studied for noble gasses (Kr and Xe) and the more volatile elements of iodine, cesium, and aerosols such as Te, Rb and Sr as illustrative examples of source term release under LOCA conditions. The results of the activity removal mechanisms indicates that the impact of volumetric leakage rate for noble gasses is important during the accident, while the influence of deposition on the containment surfaces for cesium, mainly iodine isotopes and aerosol has the largest contribution in removal of activity during evolution of the accident.