The design and manufacturing of different full-size mock-ups of the resonance cavity of gyrotrons, relevant for fusion applications, were performed according to two different cooling strategies. The first one relies on mini-channels, which are very promising in the direction of increasing the heat transfer in the heavily loaded cavity, but which could face an excessively large pressure drop, while the second one adopts the solution of Raschig rings, already successfully used in European operating gyrotrons. The mock-ups, manufactured with conventional techniques, were hydraulically characterized at the Thales premises, using water at room temperature. The measured pressure drop data were used to validate the corresponding numerical computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models, developed with the commercial software STAR-CCM+ (Siemens PLM Software, Plano TX, U.S.A.) and resulting in excellent agreement with the test results. When the validated models were used to compare the two optimized cooling configurations, it resulted that, for the same water flow, the mini-channel strategy gave a pressure drop was two-fold greater than that of the Raschig rings strategy, allowing a maximum flow rate of 1 × 10−3 m3/s to meet a maximum allowable pressure drop of 0.5 MPa.

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Porous media are typically capable to enhance heat transfer, at the cost of an increase of the pressure drop, mainly in view of the huge increase in the surface wetted by the fluid. In this work, a tubular receiver for CSP applications, partly filled with a porous medium constituted by a packed bed of copper Raschig Rings is investigated for the first time. The analysis, carried out numerically, aims at studying in detail the mechanisms of the heat transfer from the wall to the gaseous heat transfer fluid (air) through the porous metal matrix in symmetric and asymmetric heating conditions. The computed results are compared to what occurs in a smooth tube subjected to the same heating, to check the increase in the heat transfer. The investigation carried out in this work represents the first step in the optimization of the porous medium structure inside the tubular receiver.