Design, Fabrication, and Testing of a High Temperature Foam Core Recuperator for Small Modular Reactors
A helium-cooled small modular reactor (SMR) can take advantage of the Brayton power conversion cycle with greater efficiency compared to the steam Rankine cycle. Alternatively, a more advanced supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) Brayton system would have the added benefit that much less pumping power is required to convert a given thermal input to electricity compared to helium. Both helium and sCO2 are applicable to a wide variety of power generation applications including nuclear, geothermal, solar-thermal, and fossil fuel, as well as shipboard propulsion. Refractory metallic foams operating at extremely high temperatures can increase heat transfer efficiency in gas-to-gas and liquid-to-gas heat exchangers by providing an extended surface area for better convection, i.e., conduction into the foam ligaments providing a “fin effect,” and by disruption of the thermal boundary layer near the hot wall and ligaments by turbulence promotion. These new heat exchangers have compact size and use advanced manufacturing techniques to avoid costly machining. The objective of this project was to establish the initial feasibility of a foam core recuperator for use in a 200-MWt small modular reactor operating with helium or sCO2 in a Brayton cycle. In previous work, Ultramet and Sandia National Laboratories had designed and constructed the components of a high temperature refractory regenerator (closed-loop recuperator). The recuperator was originally designed for use in the helium flow loop at Sandia, at 4 MPa pressure and 100 g/s helium flow, for high temperature target inlet testing. Modeling of the non-optimized recuperator in the current project indicated that when using gaseous helium as the working fluid, the recuperator could operate with a maximum hot leg inlet temperature of 900°C (600°C cold leg inlet) and transfer 57 kW to the cold leg (96% effectiveness) using 100 g/s helium at 4 MPa. The recuperator components had been fabricated using a molybdenum open-cell foam core within a solid molybdenum alloy pressure vessel per specifications defined by Sandia, but the components had never been fully assembled. In the current project, Ultramet completed assembly of the foam core recuperator and performed helium flow testing to support continued design and analysis at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Based on the flow test data, ORNL further refined the existing models and continued design optimization and scaleup toward small modular reactor applications. A preliminary modular design was established for a system capable of servicing a 200 MWt small modular reactor under conditions representative of sCO2 systems.
- Research Organization:
- Ultramet (Pacoima, CA)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC); USDOE Office of Nuclear Energy (NE)
- Contributing Organization:
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL, Oak Ridge, TN)
- DOE Contract Number:
- SC0020949
- OSTI ID:
- 1988076
- Type / Phase:
- SBIR (Phase I)
- Report Number(s):
- DOE-ULTRAMET-0020949; ULTRA-TR-21-17096
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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