www.inl.gov Thermal Fluid Characteristics for Prismatic HTGRs IAEA Course on High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor Technology Tsinghua University, Beijing October 22-26, 2012 Javier Ortensi Idaho National Laboratory (INL)
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Thermal Fluid Characteristics for Prismatic HTGRs
IAEA Course on High Temperature
Gas Cooled Reactor Technology
Tsinghua University, Beijing
October 22-26, 2012
Javier Ortensi
Idaho National Laboratory (INL)
Overview
• General Thermal Fluids Characteristics
• Design Requirements
• Bypass Flow and Cross Flow
• Thermal Fluids Modeling
• Some of the Remaining Challenges – Lower plenum
– RCCS & more
• Conclusions
General: Helium Flow Path
General: Passive Safety Design
• Annular core design – Lower inner reflector and fuel temperatures
– More graphite (heat storage)
• Large negative temperature coefficient – Temperature rise always leads to power decrease
• Passive decay heat removal – RCCS with natural convective flow
– RCCS without natural convective flow to ground
• No powered reactor safety systems
General: Materials
• Graphite core – Large heat capacity (Cp)
– Large thermal inertia (I)
– Very isotropic, low impurities
– Stability – sublimates above 3600oC
• Multi-hole block design optimized to: • reduce fuel temperature
• reduce pressure drop
• maintain graphite structural integrity
• Thermo-physical properties depend on temperature and fluence (burnup)
General: Local Heating
• Primarily from large fission fragments in fuel
• Conduction in solid material (fuel & graphite)
• Conduction + radiation in gaps
• Convection in fluid regions
fuel
graphite
coolant
gap
General: Non-local heating
• Approximately 6% of the power is generated via gamma + neutron heating – Heat neighboring blocks
– Use specialized cross sections
– Require a gamma transport calculation or correction
• ~2% of this is deposited in the inner and outer reflector which may have non-negligible effect on the temperature distribution
• Affects time of criticality during LOFC without SCRAM
General: Flow
• Down through core – Forces transition to natural convection during loss of flow
• Well defined flow channels
• Mainly low mach number with velocities ~60 m/s max.
• Turbulent flow during normal operation
• Flow redistribution driven by high flow resistance in hot regions – Large core with large DTs
– Flow rate variability between columns and outlet temperatures
• Small temperature rise from parasitic radial flow
• Reduced pressure drop to avoid flow induced vibrations
Overview
• General Thermal Fluids Characteristics
• Design Requirements
• Bypass Flow and Cross Flow
• Thermal Fluids Modeling
• Some of the Remaining Challenges – Lower plenum
– RCCS & more
• Conclusions
PMR Thermal Fluids Design Requirements (GA)
Temperature profile of the MHTGR (GA)
At steady state core mid height – high power
location
DT~100 from fuel to moderator
DT~125 moderator to coolant
DT~300 across a block near inner reflector
Overview
• General PMR Thermal Fluids
• Design Requirements
• Bypass Flow and Cross Flow
• Thermal Fluids Modeling
• Some of the Remaining Challenges – Lower plenum
– RCCS & more
• Conclusions
PMR Bypass Flow (1/2)
• Prediction of the bypass flow is the most important thermal fluids phenomena
• Flow that bypasses coolant holes
• Gaps between fuel blocks – Large temperature gradients and fast neutron irradiation result in uneven
block expansion (uncertainty in gap geometry) – Needed for refueling – Provide cooling to peripheral compacts
• Needed to cool control rods
13
PMR Bypass Flow (2/2)
0 mm gap
5 mm gap
Crossflow
• Horizontal gaps between stacked graphite elements form leakage paths to/from primary coolant flow path
• Driven by lateral pressure gradient
• Leakage crossflow characteristics in an HTGR core have been studied experimentally and numerically by H. Kaburaki and T. Takizuka – Empirical cross flow equations developed
15
Overview
• General PMR Thermal Fluids
• Design Requirements
• Bypass Flow and Cross Flow
• Thermal Fluids Modeling
• Some of the Remaining Challenges – Lower plenum
– RCCS & more
• Conclusions
17
PMR Thermal Fluids Modeling Requirements
• Incompressible flow models OK for regions with no heat transfer
– Can assume that pressure is constant
• Compressible flow models for low Mach number
– Heat transfer regions
– Max He velocity (~60 m/s) (acoustic velocity 1500 m/s)
– Might not be the case for some transients
• Momentum flux terms should be included in conservation equations
– Large DT across core causes significant localized fluid acceleration
– Significant for depressurization event (blowdown)
• Frictionless flow
– Fluid press change from plenum to duct can be addressed with good duct design - produces flow acceleration with minor losses
18
PMR Thermal Fluids Modeling Requirements
• Capturing the bypass flow is essential
– 10%~25% of total coolant flow moves between the blocks (ANL-GenIV-071)
• Ability to capture flow reversal
– Forced circulation flow is from top of core to bottom of core
– Natural circulation flow (LOFC) is from bottom to top
– Need those gravitational terms for transients
• Complex low velocity, buoyancy-driven flow in upper plenum during LOFC: limiting safety case for core barrel top plate
Approach to Core Thermal Fluids Modeling
• Traditional TF – 1-D pipe flow networks
– Subchannel codes
– Fast for core transient analysis but details are lost
• Homogeneous multi-physics methods are also in use – Solve tightly coupled neutronics and thermal fluids equations
– Better representation of the core
– Require properly homogenized parameters from CFD or other correlations
• Computational Fluid Dynamics – Used in small domains where details needed or other methods
fail
– Not used for full core transient analysis
Approach to Core Thermal Fluids Modeling (1D System Codes e.g. RELAP5)
• Reactor is represented by a series of 1-D pipes
• Pros
– Flexible
– History of successful use in LWRs
• Cons
– Ability to model 3-D bypass flow phenomena is questionable
– Existing codes would require substantial modification for use with HTRs
• Modeling concepts have been borrowed from these codes (i.e. single and time dependent junctions/volumes) for use in AGREE code
20
RELAP5 model
Example: AGREE PMR Fluids Modeling
• A 3-D core is represented by a series of cross-connected 1-D subchannels
• Subchannel method is based on proven LWR core thermal-hydraulic analysis methodologies (i.e. COBRA/VIPRE)
1-D subchannels flow into and out of slide
Approach to Core Thermal Fluids Modeling: Multi-Physics (3-D homogenized)
• Partial 3-D representation of homogenized core with many (103-104) cells
• Pros – Improved fidelity solution
– Tightly coupled allows improved
time stepping with less error
– Easy to add multi-scale
– Computationally reasonable
• Cons – Need multi-mesh capability
– Complex systems to maintain
– Parallelization is required
Approach to Core Thermal Fluids Modeling: (Computational Fluid Dynamics)
• Full 3-D representation of core using large number of cells (>106)
• Pros – High fidelity solution
• Cons – Computationally expensive
– Parametric studies may be cumbersome/slow
– So far loosely coupled to neutronics in SHARP with DeCART to STAR-CD
• Use CFD as a verification tool
23
(Image: ANL-GenIV-121)
Effective Thermal Conductivity
• NRC contracted AMEC to determine thermal conductivity
• Computed for – TRISO
– Compact, pebble
– Block
• Results agree well with reference CFD computations
Temperature
[K]
Ref. k
[W/m.K]
AMEC k
[W/m.K]
500 29.401 29.349
1000 19.557 19.518
1500 15.245 15.214
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
-0.4
-0.2
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
400 900 1400
Th
erm
al C
on
du
ctiv
ity
[W
/m.K
]
Geo
met
ric
Co
rrec
tio
n F
act
or
Temperature [K]
UO2
buffer
PyC1
PyC2
SiC
matrix
k
Courtesy of Ivor Clifford, PSU, 2012
Overview
• Helium Flow Path
• General PMR Thermal Fluids
• Design Requirements
• Bypass Flow and Cross Flow
• Thermal Fluids Modeling
• Some of the Remaining Challenges – Lower plenum
– RCCS & more
• Conclusions
Analysis Challenges: Lower Plenum (1/2)
• Graphite core support structure – Forms exit plenum
– Provides inspection/surveillance capability
Analysis Challenges: Lower Plenum (2/2)
• Multiple jets enter lower plenum (hot streaks ± 200 oC of average)
• Cross flow moves towards outlet
• Most full core TF models cannot resolve this
• CFD can, but slow given the domain size
• New CFD-like 3-D flow models needed for these regions
Courtesy of Fluent
Analysis Challenges: RCCS
• Used to remove heat from RPV to containment structure
• Safety grade passive or redundant forced convection
• Air versus water cooled designs (doubt about reliability of air cooled)
• Needs to accommodate all scenarios
• Two-phase flow behavior RCCS water
cooling channels – natural circulation with flow stagnation
– forward and backward flow
Other - Thermal Fluid Challenges
• Effect of the gamma + neutron heating on the thermal fluids calculation
• Modeling changes in the by-pass and cross flow channels (gaps) due to graphite irradiation and thermal expansion/contraction
• Changes in the thermo-physical properties due to temperatures and irradiation
• Low flow phenomena (natural circulation plumes on top plate)
• Graphite oxidation highly dependent on TF solutions of ingress
Conclusions
• Design requirements are well established
• Single phase fluid flow is straight forward to model in most regions of the core with various techniques
• All heat transfer mechanisms: conduction, convection, and radiation
• Modeling of bypass is primary challenge
• Some difficulties with modeling of plenums and transition to natural convection
• Interplay of power peaking, bypass & crossflow to determine maximum fuel temperatures
• Other challenges in hot streaking, RCCS design
Bibliography
– “HTGR Technology Course for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission” May 24-27, 2010, Idaho National Laboratory and General Atomics.
– “Computational fluid dynamic analysis of core bypass flow phenomena in a prismatic VHTR,” H. Sato, R. Johnson, R. Schultz, Annals. Nuc. Ener., 37 (2010) pp. 1172-1185.
– “Crossflow Characteristics of HTGR Fuel Blocks,” H. Kaburaki, T. Takizuka, Nucl. Eng. Des., 120 (1990) pp 425-434.
– “Numerical investigation of a heat transfer within the prismatic fuel assembly of a very high temperature reactor,” N. Tak, M. Kim, W.J. Lee, Annals Nuc. Ener., 35 (2008) pp. 1892-1899.
– “RCCS Experiments and Validation for High Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactor”, C. Oh, C. Davis, G.C. Park, NURETH-12, Pittburg, Pennsylvanya, USA, 2007.
[email protected] (208) 526-4256
Presented by:
Javier Ortensi (INL)
Content:
Javier Ortensi (INL)
Gerhard Strydom (INL)
Volkan Seker (U-Michigan)
RELAP5-3D Results MHTGR