FY 2017 Progress Report on the Argonne Sodium Draining and Refilling Experiments
- Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
The main incentive for utilization of compact diffusion-bonded sodium-to-CO2 heat exchangers for a Sodium-Cooled Fast Reactor (SFR) with a supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) Brayton cycle power converter is the potential for reduction in heat exchanger size and cost relative to traditional shell-and-tube technology. There is an incentive for the designer to reduce the width of the sodium and CO2 channels as much as possible to realize the greatest size and cost reductions. However, there are practical limits on minimum channel size due to fundamental phenomena particular to sodium and CO2. One is that the channel size must be large enough to enable the rapid draining of sodium from the heat exchanger sodium channels in the event that a sodium leak is detected in an intermediate sodium heat transport system loop, in order to rapidly drain the sodium into the loop sodium storage vessel/tank and thereby limit the sodium mass released that could potentially burn if exposed to air. Information about the minimum sodium channel size can only be obtained by actually draining sodium from representative wetted stainless steel sodium channels under prototypical conditions. It is not possible to obtain such information through modeling and simulation or through simulant experiments. The ANL Sodium Draining and Refilling experiment facility has been designed and is being assembled to obtain data on the draining of sodium from compact diffusion-bonded sodium-to-carbon dioxide heat exchanger sodium channels including the mass of sodium drained versus time, the mass of sodium retained inside of the channels, and the potential for sodium to bridge the channel, freeze, and form a plug inside the channel versus the channel size. This information is needed to determine the minimum sodium channel size required to meet the requirements for sodium draining without bridges being left inside of the channels. Initial shakedown testing has been initiated using water and glass and plastic tubes before transitioning to sodium and stainless steel test sections. For the latter, the test sections will be heated to high temperature to promote rapid sodium wetting of the stainless steel prior to draining. Testing with sodium will be initiated in FY 2018.
- Research Organization:
- Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Nuclear Energy (NE), Reactor Fleet and Advanced Reactor Development. Nuclear Reactor Technologies
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC02-06CH11357
- OSTI ID:
- 1490820
- Report Number(s):
- ANL-ART-126; 144653
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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