Modeling a Sodium Heat Pipe Experiment at SPHERE Using Sockeye

Conference · Sun Aug 31 00:00:00 EDT 2025

OSTI ID:3024774

Hansel, Joshua E ^[1]; Sellers, Zachary Don ^[1]; Hartvigsen, Jeremy Lee ^[1]; Sabharwall, Piyush ^[1]; Charlot, Lise ^[1]; Merzari, Elia ^[2]

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1. Idaho National Laboratory
2. The Pennsylvania State University

The Single Primary Heat Extraction and Rejection Emulator (SPHERE) facility at Idaho Na- tional Laboratory was recently utilized to generate data for the startup and steady operation of a high-performance, sodium heat pipe over the course of 1000 hours, as a test of detrimental, long-term effects of heat pipe operation. The setup consists of a single, sodium heat pipe enclosed in a stainless-steel vacuum chamber, heated radiatively via a cylindrical ceramic fiber heater configuration and cooled via a water-cooled calorimeter. Measurements include temperatures at several axial locations along the outer surface of the heat pipe, the power provided to the heaters, and the heat removal rate of the calorimeter. In this work, this data is utilized to validate heat pipe models in the heat pipe application Sockeye, which is based upon the Multiphysics Object-Oriented Simulation Environment (MOOSE) framework. Sockeye provides various heat pipe models at an engineering scale appropriate for the multiphysics simulation of microreactors, which may feature several hundred heat pipes. This work details models of this experiment in SPHERE using various heat pipe models with Sockeye, including heat conduction-based models and compressible flow models of the heat pipe interior. These models are compared to the experimental data to assess the accuracy of several aspects of heat pipe modeling, including frozen startup, the effect of non-condensable gases, and the coupling of the heat pipe to its environment.

• Research Organization: Idaho National Laboratory (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Nuclear Energy (NE); USDOE Office of Nuclear Energy (NE)
• DOE Contract Number: AC07-05ID14517
• OSTI ID: 3024774
• Report Number(s): INL/CON-25-83495
• Resource Type: Conference proceedings
• Conference Information: 21st International Topical Meeting on Nuclear Reactor Thermal Hydraulics, Busan, Korea, 08/31/2025 - 09/05/2025
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

97 - MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING
heat pipe
Sockeye
SPHERE