Numerical simulation of liquid-liquid heat pipe heat exchanger applied as sampling cooler in nuclear power

Abstract

Monitoring and control of the temperature and pressure of water sample are critical issues in the nuclear power engineering for the efficient and safe operation. In this paper, through the thermal and fluid dynamical simulations, we demonstrated the improvement in heat transfer performance of the heat pipes used in the sampling cooler by changing the heat pipe diameters and the fin types. Heat pipes with helical fins show a 30.9% enhancement in heat transfer j factor compared to the smooth heat pipes. Additionally, the numerical results also show that the sampling cooler has an optimal helical fin pitch, which is 140mm.