For the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials, “KIMM” (Changwon, South Korea), ANCO developed the preliminary design of a 20,000-square foot laboratory for severe thermal-hydraulic testing of safety-related nuclear power plant pumps and valves.  This high-pressure, high-temperature water-flow test facility is possibly the first in the world to be designed to meet the severe test standard, QME-1, issued in 1997 by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).

Application of this standard requires, for example, that selected pumps must transition within 5 sec. from pumping highly pressurized cold water to pumping water at elevated temperature, simulating a possible nuclear plant condition.

The test facility is a large industrial building containing a 1500 kWt ‘power plant’ with a multi-branch piping loop to allow the imposition of thermal-hydraulic test conditions, including pressures, temperature and flow rates to 2800 psig, and 14,000 plus gallons/minute, on the subject valves and pumps during their operation.  The branch lines (five, with diameters ranging from 1-in. to 36-in.) pass through a bunker-like reinforced concrete ‘test section’ within the lab building and enable the testing of a very broad range of specimen sizes.

The test facility has four primary modes of flow operation: forward flow testing of valves; sudden reverse flow testing of check valves once forward flow conditions have been established; pump hot-to-cold slow (3.6 hr) transient testing; and pump cold-to-hot rapid (5-second) transient tests.   For the pump tests, the piping runs and vessels are first brought up to initial conditions using the loop circulation pumps, after which those circulation pumps are shutoff and isolated from the test section.  At that point, the pump under test is brought up to speed and the transient flow testing initiated.  For the 5-second transient pump tests, cold water is rapidly injected into the system via dual high-head injection pumps.