Analysis on the Preliminary Gap Conductance Test with Single Primary Heat Extraction and Removal Emulator

Conference · Tue Nov 15 00:00:00 EST 2022

OSTI ID:1967414

Song, Minseop ^[1]; Sellers, Zachary Don ^[2]; Hartvigsen, Jeremy Lee ^[2]; Qin, Sunming ^[2]; Sabharwall, Piyush ^[2]

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1. Hanyang University
2. Idaho National Laboratory

Microreactor is a type of nuclear reactor that is intended to produce thermal energy from the micro and integrated design. Among various microreactor roadmaps, microreactor with heat pipes is one of the promising designs that under active development. At Idaho National Laboratory (INL) and supported by the Department of Energy (DOE) Microreactor Program (MRP), a Single Primary Heat Extraction and Removal Emulator (SPHERE) was developed. The main purpose of SPHRE is to understand thermal performance of heat pipe in the conjunction of heat source without using nuclear material. The heat pipe used in the SPHERE has sodium as a working fluid, with Argon gas in the vapor region, thus this heat pipe is variable conductance heat pipe (VCHP). The volume of non-condensable gas changes with power and elapsed time, so the area covered by non-condensable gas changes. This gives an effect that passively controls the cooling capability of condenser section. This preliminary experiment was intended to perform a gap conductance experiment that reveals heat transfer characteristics of gas at the gap around the heat pipe. However, there are not many experimental data that deals with heat transfer of the gas at the gap around heat pipe. In this research, the preliminary experimental result regarding to the heat pipe performance with different composition of gas at the gap, level of power is presented. The experimental data will be used for the validation study of SOCKEYE as a future plan.

• Research Organization: Idaho National Laboratory (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Nuclear Energy (NE)
• DOE Contract Number: AC07-05ID14517
• OSTI ID: 1967414
• Report Number(s): INL/CON-23-69923-Rev001
• Conference Information: 2022 ANS Winter Meeting and Technology Expo, Phoenix, AZ, 11/13/2022 - 11/17/2022
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

42 ENGINEERING
Heat Pipe
Microreactor Program