ver-1kd

Sieverts’ Law Boundaries with Chemical Reactions and Volumetric Source

General Case Description

Two enclosures are separated by a membrane that allows diffusion according to Sieverts' law and chemical reactions, with a volumetric source in Enclosure 1. Enclosure 2 has twice the volume of Enclosure 1.

Case Set Up

This verification problem is taken from Ambrosek and Longhurst (2008).

This setup describes a diffusion system in which tritium T, dihydrogen H and HT are modeled across a one-dimensional domain split into two enclosures. Compared to the ver-1kc-2 case, we now incorporate a T tritium volumetric source in Enclosure 1. The volumetric source rate is set to mol/m/s with 1/mol. The total system length is m, divided into 100 segments. The system operates at a constant temperature of 500 Kelvin. Initial tritium T and dihydrogen H pressures are specified as Pa for Enclosure 1 and Pa for Enclosure 2. Initially, there is no HT in either enclosure.

The reaction between the species is described as follows

The kinematic evolutions of the species are given by the following equations

where and represent the reaction rates for the forward and reverse reactions, respectively.

At equilibrium, the time derivatives are zero

From this, we can derive the same equilibrium condition as used in TMAP7:

where the equilibrium constant is defined as

(1)

Similarly to TMAP7, the equilibrium constant has been set to a fixed value of .

The diffusion and generation processes for each species in the two enclosures can be expressed by

and

where and represent the concentration fields in enclosures 1 and 2 respectively, is the time, denotes the diffusivity, the volumetric source rate, the volume of enclosure 1, the Boltzmann constant and the temperature. Note that the diffusivity may vary across different species and enclosures. However, in this case, it is assumed to be identical for all.

The concentration in Enclosure 1 is related to the partial pressure and concentration in Enclosure 2 via the interface sorption law:

where is the ideal gas constant in J/mol/K, is the temperature in K, is the solubility, and is the exponent of the sorption law. For Sieverts' law, .

Results

We assume that , which is expected to result in at equilibrium.

As illustrated in Figure 1, since the chemical reactions occur immediately, an initial quantity of HT is present in Enclosure 1, while T and H initially drop to half their original amounts.

The pressures of T and H in Enclosure 1 decrease due to diffusion into Enclosure 2. The constant flow rate of the T source slows down the pressure drop of T in Enclosure 2. Moreover, the volumetric source increases the amount of T in Enclosure 1, thereby enhancing its chemical reactions with H. Consequently, in Enclosure 1, H pressure gradually decreases over time, while HT pressure rises.

Similarly, in Enclosure 2, the pressures of T and H increase, with the rise being more pronounced for T due to the continuous supply from the source. As a result, more H reacts with T, further contributing to the increase in HT pressure.

For verification purposes, it is crucial to ensure that the chemical equilibrium between HT, T and H is achieved. This can be verified in both enclosures by examining the ratio between and , which must equal . As shown in Figure 2, this ratio approaches for both enclosures at equilibrium. To reach this equilibrium, the ratio of and must respect Eq. (1). The values of and must also be large enough to ensure that the kinetics of chemical reactions are faster than diffusion or surface permeation to be closer to the equilibrium assumption imposed in TMAP7. Here, the equilibrium in enclosure 1 is achieved rapidly. Increasing and would also enable a quicker attainment of equilibrium in enclosure 2. However, using very high values for and would lead to an unnecessary increase in computational costs.

The concentration ratios for T, H, and HT between enclosures 1 and 2, shown in Figure 3, Figure 4, and Figure 5, demonstrate that the results obtained with TMAP8 are consistent with the analytical results derived from the sorption law for .

Figure 1: Evolution of species concentration over time governed by Sieverts' law with and .

Figure 2: Equilibrium constant as a function of time for .

Figure 3: T concentration ratio between enclosures 1 and 2 at the interface for and . This verifies TMAP8's ability to apply Sieverts' law across the interface.

Figure 4: H concentration ratio between enclosures 1 and 2 at the interface for and . This verifies TMAP8's ability to apply Sieverts' law across the interface.

Figure 5: HT concentration ratio between enclosures 1 and 2 at the interface for and . This verifies TMAP8's ability to apply Sieverts' law across the interface.

Input files

The input file for this case can be found at (test/tests/ver-1kd/ver-1kd.i).

References

  1. James Ambrosek and GR Longhurst. Verification and Validation of TMAP7. Technical Report INEEL/EXT-04-01657, Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, December 2008.[BibTeX]