Sockeye Heat Pipe Analysis Code Verification and Validation

Conference · Fri Mar 11 00:00:00 EST 2022

OSTI ID:2315015

Hansel, Joshua E ^[1]; Madeleine Charlot, Lise Cecile ^[1]

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1. Idaho National Laboratory

Some of the most promising microreactor designs currently under development utilize heat pipe technology to transfer heat from the reactor core to the secondary side heat exchanger, due to the technology’s compactness, efficiency, passivity, and reliability. Sockeye is an engineering-scale heat pipe tool developed under the Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation Program to be used for the design and safety analysis of microreactors. Sockeye’s core capability lies in a 1D, two-phase, compressible flow model, used to simulate the working fluid inside the heat pipe. Sockeye is built on the Multiphysics Object-Oriented Simulation Environment framework, which allows for seamless multiphysics coupling with other Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation tools and can thus be used in a full-scale simulation of a microreactor assembly, which can include hundreds of heat pipes. This paper presents some initial verification and validation assessments performed for Sockeye. We demonstrate good agreement between Sockeye’s numerical results and steady-state analytic solutions for velocity and pressure drop, with differences attributable to the underlying assumptions made by the analytic solutions. We also show that Sockeye reproduces analytic predictions of key operational limits, such as the capillary limit and the sonic limit. Finally, we compare Sockeye results to experimental data for the SAFE-30 heat pipe module test.

• 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: 2315015
• Report Number(s): INL/CON-22-66067-Rev000
• Conference Information: The 19th International Topical Meeting on Nuclear Reactor Thermal Hydraulics (NURETH-19), Brussels, Belgium, 03/06/2022 - 03/11/2022
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS
97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING
Heat pipe technology
Sockeye
Verification and Validation