FY 2014 Sodium-Supercritical CO2 Interactions in the SNAKE Experiment Facility
- Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
One appealing feature of the supercritical carbon dioxide Brayton cycle energy conversion system is the small footprint that the hardware requires, which is in part due to the use of compact diffusion-bonded heat exchangers such as Printed Circuit Heat Exchanger (PCHEs) or Hybrid Heat Exchangers (H2X) as the heat source heat exchanger (sodium-to-CO2) as well as the recuperator and cooler modules. Although PCHEs and H2Xs have a high degree of structural integrity, the potential for leaks to develop between the sodium and CO2 coolant channels in the heat exchanger cannot be ruled out, and this would lead to discharge of high pressure CO2 into the secondary coolant circuit. Due to the robustness of the PCHE design, catastrophic failure leading to CO2 jet blowdown into the secondary sodium loop is not deemed likely. Rather, small cracks (or micro-leaks) may develop in which CO2 will bleed into the secondary system at a relatively low rate and chemically react with the sodium. The goal of the sodium-CO2 interaction tests is to gain a fundamental understanding of sodium-CO2 interactions under prototypical conditions of compact diffusion-bonded heat exchanger failure, a fundamental understanding of self-plugging if it occurs, and the development of one-dimensional phenomenological models for the interactions between high-pressure CO2 issuing into liquid sodium from a micro-leak across a stainless steel pressure boundary. These models will be validated using experiment data. Therefore, an experiment program at Argonne was initiated in Fiscal Year 2010 to investigate the reaction behavior between sodium and CO2 under micro-leak conditions. Several reports have described the facility scaling rationale and design. Assembly of the SNAKE (S-CO2, Na Kinetics Experiment) began in Fiscal Year 2011 and was completed in July 2012. The sodium inventory in this facility consists of approximately 44 lbs (20 kg; ~21 L/5.5 gal).
- Research Organization:
- Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Nuclear Energy, Office of Nuclear Reactor Technologies, Advanced Reactor Technologies (ART)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC02-06CH11357
- OSTI ID:
- 1179446
- Report Number(s):
- ANL-SMR--18; 79385
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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