A CONDUCTION-BASED HEAT PIPE MODEL FOR ANALYZING THE ENTIRE PROCESS OF LIQUID-METAL HEAT PIPE STARTUP

Conference · Mon Mar 07 04:00:00 UTC 2022

OSTI ID:1856343

Yoo, Jun Soo ^[1]; Song, Minseop ^[1]; Qin, Sunming ^[1]; Sabharwall, Piyush ^[1]

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1. Idaho National Laboratory

The Heat Pipe-cooled Microreactor (HPM) is one of the micro nuclear reactor designs under active study at the U.S. Idaho National Laboratory. Among the major concerns of HPM research is to understand the startup behavior of the heat pipe-cooled system associated with the startup of the liquid-metal heat pipes initialing from frozen state. The startup of liquid-metal heat pipes typically involves a number of nonlinear mass and heat transport processes including the phase change from solid to liquid and vapor. Hence, it is still a huge challenge to simulate the liquid-metal heat pipe startup using conventional CFD methods and software. The major difficulties of numerical CFD modeling come from the phase-change process, multiphase interaction, microporous wick flow, and compressible gas dynamics that occur during startup of the liquid-metal heat pipes. This paper proposes a simplified conduction-based method to provide practical insights into the entire startup process of the liquid-metal heat pipes while mitigating the challenges of addressing all the complex physics. We discuss the theoretical basis and modeling assumptions to analyze the liquid-metal heat pipe startup from frozen state based solely on heat-conduction equations. Then, the proposed model is implemented into the commercial CFD software to verify the model performance. The model prediction results are discussed via the comparison with the experimental data obtained from sodium heat-pipe startup experiments.

• Research Organization: Idaho National Laboratory (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: DOE Micro-reactor Program (MRP); USDOE Office of Nuclear Energy (NE)
• DOE Contract Number: AC07-05ID14517
• OSTI ID: 1856343
• Report Number(s): INL/CON-21-63594-Rev000
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

42 ENGINEERING
Conduction-based heat pipe analysis
Heat pipe frozen startup
Liquid-metal heat pipe
Microreactor