LAUSR

Summary The gas-liquid separator is a critical component for the online tritium gas removal system in thorium molten salt reactor. In this paper, an isolated bubble trajectory in a single-phase swirling flow field of the separator is investigated theoretically. The mathematical modeling of the forces acting on the bubble is established, and the motion equations of bubble are solved numerically. The axial and circumferential velocities of the swirling flow are approximated by the combination of 2 co-flow Batchelor vortices. Notably, it is a promising way to obtain the analytical expression of velocity field in this gas-liquid separator. The results indicate that the separation length will increase as decreasing diameter of bubble and swirl number. Hence, the numerical simulation provides an effective tool to predict bubble trajectory and optimize the design of the gas-liquid separator.