3-D Unsteady Model for Be-Steam Reaction in Water-Cooled Ceramic Breeder Blanket

Khodak, Andrei; Cheng, Xiaoman; Liu, Songlin; Titus, Peter H.; Neilson, George H.

doi:10.1109/TPS.2018.2829105

Title: 3-D Unsteady Model for Be-Steam Reaction in Water-Cooled Ceramic Breeder Blanket

Abstract

Here, the design of the water-cooled ceramic breeder (WCCB) blanket includes beryllium multiplier layers. At elevated temperature, beryllium reacts with steam in an exothermic reaction producing beryllium oxide and hydrogen. Such situation may occur in WCCB in the case of the rupture of one of the cooling pipes in the blanket module. This process occurs locally in a complex 3-D geometry of the blanket containing several different granular levels and a network of cooling pipes and structural supports. The process is also inherently unsteady since reaction rate depends on concentration of steam and pure beryllium which changes in time. In order to perform the detailed analysis of the process, the model of the reacting flowthrough porous media was developed and introduced into 3-D computational fluid dynamics code. In this model, granular beds are introduced as porous solids simplifying the model geometry and reducing typical mesh size to manageable amount of tens of millions of elements. A reaction rate between solid beryllium and steam is obtained from experimental results, and depends on temperature and concentration of the reactants. The differential equation for beryllium oxide fraction is introduced, allowing obtaining distributions of beryllium oxide in space and time. Multicomponent flow consisting ofmore »« less

Authors:

^[1]; Cheng, Xiaoman ^[2]; Liu, Songlin ^[2];

^[1];

^[1]

Princeton Plasma Physics Lab. (PPPL), Princeton, NJ (United States)
Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei (China)

Publication Date:: Tue May 08 00:00:00 EDT 2018

Research Org.:: Princeton Plasma Physics Lab. (PPPL), Princeton, NJ (United States)

Sponsoring Org.:: USDOE

OSTI Identifier:: 1472077

Grant/Contract Number:: AC02-09CH11466

Resource Type:: Accepted Manuscript

Journal Name:: IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science

Additional Journal Information:: Journal Volume: 46; Journal Issue: 6; Journal ID: ISSN 0093-3813

Publisher:: IEEE

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

Subject:: 70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY; Be-steam reaction; computational fluid dynamics (CFD); water-cooled ceramic breeder (WCCB) blanket

Citation Formats


                    Khodak, Andrei, Cheng, Xiaoman, Liu, Songlin, Titus, Peter H., and Neilson, George H. 3-D Unsteady Model for Be-Steam Reaction in Water-Cooled Ceramic Breeder Blanket.  United States: N. p., 2018. 
Web.  doi:10.1109/TPS.2018.2829105.

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                    Khodak, Andrei, Cheng, Xiaoman, Liu, Songlin, Titus, Peter H., & Neilson, George H. 3-D Unsteady Model for Be-Steam Reaction in Water-Cooled Ceramic Breeder Blanket.  United States.  https://doi.org/10.1109/TPS.2018.2829105

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                    Khodak, Andrei, Cheng, Xiaoman, Liu, Songlin, Titus, Peter H., and Neilson, George H. Tue .  
"3-D Unsteady Model for Be-Steam Reaction in Water-Cooled Ceramic Breeder Blanket".  United States.  https://doi.org/10.1109/TPS.2018.2829105.  https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1472077.

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@article{osti_1472077,

  title        = {3-D Unsteady Model for Be-Steam Reaction in Water-Cooled Ceramic Breeder Blanket},

  author       = {Khodak, Andrei and Cheng, Xiaoman and Liu, Songlin and Titus, Peter H. and Neilson, George H.},

  abstractNote = {Here, the design of the water-cooled ceramic breeder (WCCB) blanket includes beryllium multiplier layers. At elevated temperature, beryllium reacts with steam in an exothermic reaction producing beryllium oxide and hydrogen. Such situation may occur in WCCB in the case of the rupture of one of the cooling pipes in the blanket module. This process occurs locally in a complex 3-D geometry of the blanket containing several different granular levels and a network of cooling pipes and structural supports. The process is also inherently unsteady since reaction rate depends on concentration of steam and pure beryllium which changes in time. In order to perform the detailed analysis of the process, the model of the reacting flowthrough porous media was developed and introduced into 3-D computational fluid dynamics code. In this model, granular beds are introduced as porous solids simplifying the model geometry and reducing typical mesh size to manageable amount of tens of millions of elements. A reaction rate between solid beryllium and steam is obtained from experimental results, and depends on temperature and concentration of the reactants. The differential equation for beryllium oxide fraction is introduced, allowing obtaining distributions of beryllium oxide in space and time. Multicomponent flow consisting of a homogenous mixture of steam and hydrogen is considered flowing through the porous solid with variable properties. Sink and source terms for steam and hydrogen fractions are determined by local beryllium oxide mass fraction source according to the molar ratios of beryllium steam reaction. The conjugated heat transfer approach is applied to calculate heat transfer in support structures as well as coolant flow, simultaneously with the porous medium steam flow in a blanket's granular beds. The model is validated using experimental data on beryllium steam reaction for granular bed samples.},

  doi          = {10.1109/TPS.2018.2829105},

  journal      = {IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science},

  number       = 6,

  volume       = 46,

  place        = {United States},

  year         = {Tue May 08 00:00:00 EDT 2018},

  month        = {Tue May 08 00:00:00 EDT 2018}

}

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Journal Article:

Free Publicly Available Full Text

Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

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https://doi.org/10.1109/TPS.2018.2829105

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Figures / Tables:

Fig. 1: Cross-section of the CFETR Water Cooled Ceramic Breeder (WCCB) blanket, indicating locations of Be and H₂O

All figures and tables (13 total)

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