Numerical Analysis of Water-Based Nanofluid Coolant for Small Modular Reactor

Abstract

This paper is aimed at understanding thermohydrodynamic and neutronic characteristics of nanofluids for prospective application to water cooled small modular reactors. Numerical analysis is performed to investigate turbulent convective heat transfer and flow features of Al2O3 nanofluids as working fluid. The Al2O3-water nanofluids of 1%, 4% and 6% by volume have been employed for the numerical simulation resorting to the homogenous fluid assumptions with modified thermophysical properties. Results indicate that the heat transfer increases with nanoparticle volume concentrations by 4.2%–31% as compared against that for pure water. The maximum heat transfer increase at the center of a subchannel formed by fuel rods is 31.29% for the particle volume concentration of 6% corresponding to the Reynolds number of 65,000. It consequently appears promising enough to use nanofluids in small modular reactors. Neutronic and thermohydrodynamic investigations are further needed to streamline the nanoparticles and to optimize their concentration during the normal and abnormal operations.

Numerical investigation of the thermo‐hydraulic performance of water‐based nanofluids in a dimpled channel flow using Al2O3, CuO, and hybrid Al2O3–CuO as nanoparticles

“…The fact that nanofluid thermo‐physical behaviors have been systematically investigated and that controversial experimental information lacks precision. A single‐phase method for the calculation of thermo‐physical properties is selected due to the large acceptance in the literature 53–55 . The presumption of thermal balance for the particles is established, together with assuming that the fluid and the particles are not velocity different 54,56–59 .…”

Numerical Simulation of Water-Based Alumina Nanofluid in Subchannel Geometry

“…The fluid flow in the water cooled reactor is parallel to the fuel rod bundle, and the unit channel is called subchannel. A single subchannel is modeled using the flow symmetry which has been modeled extensively before [18,19,[27][28][29]. Steady-state Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes, mass, energy, and turbulence equations were discretized and solved using FLUENT 12.1.…”

“…Experimental investigation of fluid flow in fuel bundle geometry is generally costly, time consuming, and technically complicated, however. In contrast, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is a nonexpensive method which has seen dramatic growth over the last decade on numerical simulation of nanofluid turbulent convection [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][17][18][19].…”

“…There has recently been an increasing interest in practical application of nanofluid in nuclear reactor technology [17,18,[22][23][24][25]. Considering cooling application of nanofluid it seems that the nanofluids can potentially be applied to power plant cooling and safety systems owing to their enhanced properties such as thermal conductivity for instance.…”

“…They also showed that injection of nanofluid into the core could help circumvent a runaway nuclear reaction even under normal operation and increase the safety margins. Nazififard et al [18] numerically studied the waterbased nanofluid coolant for a typical small modular reactor as well.…”