Comparative Analysis of Conventional and Compact Heat Exchangers for Next Generation Nuclear Reactors

摘要

The Generation Ⅳ (Gen Ⅳ) reactor designs were developed with the intent to achieve high sustainability, a sufficiently high degree of safety and a competitive economic edge when compared to their fossil fuel-based energy producing counterparts. Six of the developed Gen Ⅳ reactors have salient features such as higher fuel burnup, broader range of acceptable fuels, closed nuclear fuel cycle as well as passive safety features. The core coolant outlet temperatures of these reactors are also very high, leading to the possibility of coupling these nuclear power plants (NPP) with other industrial applications and thus increasing the overall nuclear power cycle efficiency. However, the rise in temperature also demands the requirement of components that can operate under severe temperatures and pressures. One such critical component, which is responsible for transferring heat from the primary coolant to the secondary coolant, as well as to the power cycles, is the heat exchanger (HX). Several HX configurations have been studied for coupling with different NPPs. Recently, compact HXs have become particularly attractive due to their high effectiveness, low heat loss and high heat transfer per unit volume. The other salient feature of compact HXs is that they generally operate within the laminar flow regime, thus leading to low pressure drops. This study performs preliminary analysis on steady state designs of compact HXs, and compares their thermal performance, compactness and other figures of merit, to conventional HXs, in order to gauge the possibility of their large scale deployment.