Development of a zero‐dimensional dynamic simulator of a power conversion system with a high‐temperature gas reactor

Abstract

The HTTR-GT/H2 plant is a nuclear power cogeneration plant for hydrogen production. The hydrogen production is based on the thermochemical sulfuriodine cycle able to produce about 30 NM 3 /h of hydrogen and 15 Nm 3 /h of oxygen. The power conversion system consists of a Bryton-cycle helium gas turbine designed to produce 1 MWe electric of power output, and the source of heat is the high temperature engineering test reactor designed by the Japan Atomic Energy Agency. In this work, a preliminary dynamic simulator for the power conversion system was developed. The plant simulator couples the dynamics of the nuclear reactor, the internal heat exchanger, and plant components, such as heat exchangers, coolers, recuperators, compressors, and turbines. Despite the simplicity of modeling, the use of zero-dimensional models showed a good agreement with the reported values, being 0.67% of difference for reactor's power, 0.22% of difference for the coolant outlet temperature, and the differences of the conversion system components compared to the reference ranges between 0.0 and 0.26%.