During the used nuclear fuel vacuum drying process, helium is evacuated to pressures as low as 70 Pa, to promote water vaporization and removal. At these low pressures the gas is rarefied to the extent that there is a temperature jump thermal resistance between the surface and gas. This occurs when the mean free path of a molecule becomes a comparable to the characteristic length of a system. In order to correctly apply this jump model to a nuclear transfer cask, a two dimensional model of parallel plates and concentric cylinders were created using ANSYS/Fluent package. Heat generation was plotted against a variety of relevant pressures. The results in these simple geometries are compared to kinetic model calculations, performed by other investigators, to determine the appropriate collision diameters to use in rarefied helium gas simulations within complex geometries. A two dimensional mesh of a transfer cask containing 24 pressurized water reactor used fuel assemblies is then constructed, and the rarefied gas model was implemented in the helium-filled regions between the fuel and basket support structures. Steady state simulations with a fuel heat generation rate of 710 W/m/assemble shows that the cladding is measurably hotter when the helium gas pressure is reduced from atmospheric conditions ∼105 Pa to 500 Pa. The heat generation rate that brings the peak cladding temperature to a hydride dissolution temperature of 400°C is as much as 10% lower when the gas is at 500 Pa than under atmospheric conditions.
The objective of this work is to design an experimental apparatus that can acquire data to benchmark rarefied gas heat transfer simulations, and determine the thermal accommodation coefficient at the interface between the solid surfaces and the gas. The design consists of an aluminum cylinder with an electric heater at its centerline, and within a stainless-steel sheath, centered inside a cylindrical pressure vessel whose temperature is controlled using an external water jacket. There is 0.47-cm-wide helium-filled gap between the inner cylinder and vessel wall. For a given heat generation rate, the temperature difference across this gap will increase as the gas pressure decreases due to ratification. Thermocouples will be bonded to the vessel’s outer surface, and the inner surface of the sheath that surrounds the heated aluminum cylinder. Two, two-dimensional computational meshes of the apparatus (one cross sectional and the other cross sectional is offset) and one three-dimensional computational mesh are constructed. These models include heat generation within the electric heater, conduction within the solid and gas-filled regions, and radiation heat transfer across the gas, and rarefied gas thermal resistances at the solid/gas interfaces. These simulations show that the difference between the thermocouple temperatures and the surfaces of the helium filled gap are small compared to the temperature across the gap. This will allow this apparatus design to be used to effectively benchmark the ANSYS/Fluent simulations, and determine the thermal accommodation coefficient.
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