Testing and Qualification of CIRCE Venturi-Nozzle Flow Meter for Large Scale Experiments

This paper is focused on the tests carried out at the ENEA Brasimone Centre for the qualification of a large Venturi-Nozzle flow meter operating in Lead Bismuth Eutectic (LBE). Such flow meter has been selected to provide flow rate measurements during the thermal-hydraulic tests that will be performed on the experimental facility CIRCE. This large-scale facility is installed at the ENEA Brasimone Centre for studying the fluid-dynamics and operating behaviour of ADS reactor plants, as well as to qualify several components intended to be used in the LBE technology. The Venturi-Nozzle flow meter has been supplied by the Euromisure s.r.l., together with the calculated theoretical characteristic equation. The results obtained by the tests performed allowed to qualify this theoretical curve supplied by the manufacturer, that presents a very good agreement especially at high flow rate values.