Report on the Initial Fundamental Sodium-CO2 Interaction Experiment
- Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
The U.S. Department of Energy (U.S. DOE) Advanced Reactor Concepts (ARC) Program is developing the Sodium-Cooled Fast Reactor (SFR) as a reactor that could dramatically improve performance in sustainability, safety, economics, security, and proliferation resistance. The near-term Program goal is to reduce technical barriers to improve the prospects of advanced technology reactor systems. In the long-term, integrated advanced reactor system designs will be developed that implement the chosen missions and complete the testing and demonstration necessary for licensing. The supercritical carbon dioxide (S-CO2) Brayton cycle, coupled with an SFR, has been identified as a new and innovative energy conversion technology that could contribute to meeting these objectives especially in terms of improving economics. One appealing feature of this energy conversion system is the smaller footprint that the hardware requires relative to the traditional superheated steam cycle, which is in part due to the use of Printed Circuit Heat ExchangerTM (PCHETM) compact diffusion-bonded heat exchangers as the heat source heat exchanger (sodium-to-CO2) as well as the recuperator and cooler modules. Although PCHEs have a high degree of structural integrity, the potential for leaks to develop between the sodium and CO2 coolant channels in the secondary heat exchanger cannot be ruled out, leading 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 intermediate 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 2012 Sodium Fast Reactor Research Plan produced by Sandia National Laboratory (Denman et al., 2012) identified the interaction between sodium and CO2 as being among the highest priority areas of research for SFR accident initiators. In fact, the report rated both the experimental database and modeling capabilities of Na-CO2 interactions at the lowest current state of knowledge compared with the other listed high-priority accident initiator items. In recognition of the anticipated failure mode for a PCHE sodium-to-CO2 heat exchanger, an Argonne experiment program, called SNAKE, was initiated in FY 2010 to investigate the reaction characteristics between sodium and CO2 under micro-leak conditions.
- 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:
- 1179448
- Report Number(s):
- ANL-ARC--251; 77031
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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