Natural convection inside heated channel of a facility representing prismatic modular reactor core

Abstract

The newly developed Plenum-to-Plenum facility (P2PF) at Missouri S&T has shown to be an innovative separate effects test facility representing the geometry of prismatic modular reactors. Thermal and velocity fields inside this dual channel facility have been investigated under different natural circulation intensities. It is found that temperature and velocity profiles are function of the measurements locations and the amount of heat supplied to the channel. Quantification of the overall Rayleigh number Ra ð Þ versus overall Reynold number Re ð Þ are found to be related by Re a Ra 0:58 . Upper plenum mixing was characterized by determining the modified Reynold number Re m ð Þ and Froude number 1=Fr 2 À Á dimensionless groups. Analysis of these dimensionless groups along with observable turbulence amplifications emphasize relevance of adopting axial temperature inflection as a criterion for initiation of naturally driven flow destabilization inside vertical heated channels. Additionally, quantification of the distortion factors for characteristic dimensionless groups reveal a good similarity between the P2PF and the Modular High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor.

A review and safety aspects of modularhigh‐temperature gas‐cooledreactors

“…Here, PCC is initiated by the loss of flow with failure of a single train of PCC, as the HTTF RCCS is comprised of eight water cooling sections, where each section is considered as single train, each section is fed by its inlet and outlet valve piping system when one train is lost, this initiates the PCC event. Many studies have been conducted to computationally and experimentally investigate the natural convection heat transfer and gaseous dynamics during PCC event in a scaled‐down module of very‐high temperature reactor literature 41,44‐56 …”