Preliminary issues associated with the next generation nuclear plant intermediate heat exchanger design.

Abstract

Executive SummaryThe Next Generation Nuclear Plant (NGNP), which is an advanced high temperature gas reactor (HTGR) concept with emphasis on production of both electricity and hydrogen, involves helium as the coolant and a closed-cycle gas turbine for power generation with a core outlet/gas turbine inlet temperature of 900-1000*C. In the indirect cycle system, an intermediate heat exchanger is used to transfer the heat from primary helium from the core to the secondary fluid, which can be helium, nitrogen/helium mixture, or a molten salt. The system concept for the vary high temperature reactor (VHTR) can be a reactor based on the prismatic block of the GT-MHR developed by a consortium led by General Atomics in the U.S. or based on the PBMR design developed by ESKOM of South Africa and British Nuclear Fuels of U.K.This report has made a preliminary assessment on the issues pertaining to the intermediate heat exchanger (IHX) for the NGNP. Two IHX designs namely, shell and tube and compact heat exchangers were considered in the assessment. Printed circuit heat exchanger, among various compact heat exchanger (HX) designs, was selected for the analysis. Irrespective of the design, the material considerations for the construction of the HX are essentially similar, except may be in the fabrication of the units. As a result, we have reviewed in detail the available information on material property data relevant for the construction of HX and made a preliminary assessment of several relevant factors to make a judicious selection of the material for the IHX.The assessment included four primary candidate alloys namely, Alloy 617 (UNS N06617), Alloy 230 (UNS N06230), Alloy 800H (UNS N08810), and Alloy X (UNS N06002) for the IHX. Some of the factors addressed in this report are the tensile, creep, fatigue, creep fatigue, toughness properties for the candidate alloys, thermal aging effects on the mechanical properties, American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Code compliance information, and performance of the alloys in helium containing a wide range of impurity concentrations.A detailed thermal hydraulic analysis, using a model developed at ANL, was performed to calculate heat transfer, temperature distribution, and pressure drop inside both printed circuit and shell-and-tube heat exchangers. The analysis included evaluation of the role of key process parameters, geometrical factors in HX designs, and material properties. Calculations were performed for helium-to-helium, helium-to-helium/nitrogen, and helium-to-salt HXs. The IHX being a high temperature component, probably needs to be designed using ASME Code Section III, Subsection NH, assuming that the IHX will be classified as a class 1 component. With input from thermal hydraulic calculations performed at ANL, thermal conduction and stress analyses for both compact and shell-and-tube HXs were performed.Several conclusions were drawn from this assessment:• In general, majority of materials research and development programs in support of HTGRs were conducted in the...

Heat Exchanger Design Options and Tritium Transport Study for the VHTR System

“…Even though Alloy 617 was the proposed construction material, the effect of materials on the heat exchanger has not been considered in the current thermal analysis because the type of material has only a slight effect on the heat exchanger thermal design according to Natesan et al (2006)'s research. The reason is that the thermal resistance in the heat exchanger wall is much smaller than in the gas fluids.…”

“…The reported allowable stress data in the draft Code for Alloy 617 are shown in Figure 1-9. The primary stress limit of Alloy 617 draft code case is determined as follows (Natesan et al 2006):…”

“…Generally, the design of the heat exchanger channels is defined by the channel diameter (d), pitch (p), and plate thickness, (t p ). According to the method used by Dostal et al (2004), the minimum wall thickness between channels, t f , can (Natesan et al 2006).…”

Assessment of next generation nuclear plant intermediate heat exchanger design.

“…Based on the design, he also established the flow rates, temperatures distribution through the loops, and other IHX requirements. Based on results from his study, we selected 900°C reactor outlet temperature as the base case in the earlier study [Natesan et al 2006].…”

“…Two of the three industrial teams, General Atomics [2008] and AREVA [2008], have proposed the use of helical coil heat exchanger (HCHX) as an intermediate heat exchanger (IHX) for primary-to-intermediate helium heat transfer for NGNP. The helical coil heat exchanger design however was not considered in the previous study [Natesan et al 2006]. Therefore, a computational model for the HCHX was developed for the present study.…”