Experimental and numerical activities in support of the design of astrid sodium-gas heat exchanger
Abstract
In the framework of the development of the ASTRID Sodium-cooled Fast Reactor prototype, the CEA is studying the technical feasibility of adopting a Brayton power conversion cycle to eliminate the sodium-water interaction hazard. The sodium-gas (i.e. nitrogen) heat exchanger is the critical component to be designed, especially considering the fact that such a component has never been designed before for an operating nuclear power plant. Compact heat exchanger technologies are crucial to have reasonable dimensions of this component. The CEA is working on several design possibilities, especially in terms of heat transfer pattern and inlet/outlet header geometry, to find the optimal configuration. This paper aims to describe the experimental and numerical activities related to these topics. In particular, for the heat transfer patterns, traditional Printed Circuit Heat Exchangers (PCHE) as well as an innovative PCHE geometry are studied Laser Doppler and Particle Image Velocimetry facilities are described, together with a Validation of Heat Exchange in GAS (VHEGAS) facility, exploited to acquire a wide database to be used to validate the numerical model. The CFD model validation is detailed and a first set of heat transfer and pressure drop correlations is obtained. The comparison between traditional and innovative PCHE geometries is then shown, to demonstrate that the innovative PCHE is potentially more compact than traditional PCHEs. Regarding the inlet/outlet headers, the adopted calculation methodology is described. First characterizing maldistribution in large channel bundle and secondly adopting a porous media approach to be able to correctly represent the physical phenomena in a reasonably large computational domain.
Origin : Files produced by the author(s)
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