CHARACTERIZATION OF ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING FOR PROCESS TUBING
- Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL)
- ORNL
- University of Tennessee (UTK) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)
Additive Manufacturing has garnered significant levels of interest in recent years as a primary manufacturing method. While the general technology has been around for over 20 years, with increased computing capacity, higher powered directed energy sources, e.g., lasers and electron beams, it is coming of age as a viable technique for high value added, low production quantity components. The Savannah River National Laboratory is interested in AM as a technique to build hydrogen isotope separation components called Thermal Cycling Absorption Process (TCAP) columns. The TCAP operates from cryogenic to moderate temperatures in a cyclic manner and is a pressure boundary. The current technique for fabricating TCAP columns is to form a flat coil of 0.375 to 0.5 inch diameter tube and braze two coils together. During the brazing operation, the two nested coils often move and this movement results in gaps between the coils. Since one coil contains the working fluid, i.e., liquid nitrogen, and the other the process fluid, hydrogen isotopes, these gaps result in poor heat transfer. Additive manufacturing is being explored as a replacement technology since the adjacent tubes can be fabricated simultaneously and in intimate contact and they can also share a common wall to improve heat transfer. AM allows designers to develop unique tube structures that overcome several of the shortcomings of the coil and braze technique, such as the braze gap in fabrication and slow cooling during operation. Simple test samples with various internal geometries were designed and built from Type 316L stainless steel using a laser powder bed process. Three test article geometries that were built include a simple tube, a pair of stacked tubes, and a tube partially surrounded by two kidney shaped tubes with cooling fins that would extend into the process fluid, these tube sections incorporated thermowells or heat trace channels, selectively. The test samples will be subjected to heat transfer testing and burst testing. The samples were inspected using X-ray, computed tomography, and metallography. The results of the testing conducted on these samples are described in this paper.
- Research Organization:
- Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Manufacturing Demonstration Facility (MDF)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- Work for Others (WFO)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC05-00OR22725
- OSTI ID:
- 1360024
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: ASME 2016 Pressure Vessels and Piping Conference, Vancouver, BC, Canada, 20160717, 20160721
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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