A Heuristic for Designing Hybrid Compact Heat Exchangers for Nuclear Applications

Author(s):  
Venkata Rajesh Saranam ◽  
Peter Carter ◽  
Kyle Rozman ◽  
Ömer Dogan ◽  
Brian K. Paul

Abstract Hybrid compact heat exchangers (HCHEs) are a potential source of innovation for intermediate heat exchangers in nuclear industry, with HCHEs being designed for Gen-IV nuclear power applications. Compact heat exchangers are commonly fabricated using diffusion bonding, which can provide challenges for HCHEs due to resultant non-uniform stress distributions across hybrid structures during bonding, leading to variations in joint properties that can compromise performance and safety. In this paper, we introduce and evaluate a heuristic for determining whether a feasible set of diffusion bonding conditions exist for producing HCHE designs capable of meeting regulatory requirements under nuclear boiler and pressure vessel codes. A diffusion bonding model for predicting pore elimination and structural analyses are used to inform the heuristic and a heat exchanger design for 316 stainless steel is used to evaluate the efficacy of the heuristic to develop acceptable diffusion bonding parameters. A set of diffusion bonding conditions were identified and validated experimentally by producing various test coupons for evaluating bond strength, ductility, porosity, grain size, creep rupture, creep fatigue and channel deviation. A five-layer hybrid compact heat exchanger structure was fabricated and tensile tested demonstrating that the bonding parameters satisfy all criteria in this paper for diffusion bonding HCHEs with application to the nuclear industry.

Author(s):  
Matthew Lippy ◽  
Mark Pierson

The first Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) was designed and tested at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in the 1960’s, but recent technological advancements now allow for new components, such as heat exchangers, to be created for the next generation of MSR’s and molten salt-cooled reactors. The primary (fuel salt-to-secondary salt) heat exchanger (PHX) design has been largely ignored up to this point; however, it is shown here that modern compact heat exchangers have the potential to make dramatic improvements over traditional shell-and-tube designs. Compact heat exchangers provide a higher effectiveness and more efficient use of material that offer a more cost-effective alternative to the massive, more expensive heat exchangers planned for the MSR. While this paper focuses on the application of compact heat exchangers on a Molten Salt Reactor, many of the analyses and results are similarly applicable to other fluid-to-fluid heat exchangers. The heat exchanger design in this study seeks to find a middle-ground between the dependable shell-and-tube design and the ultra-efficient, ultra-compact designs such as the Printed Circuit Heat Exchanger being developed today. Complex channel geometries and micro-scale dimensions in modern compact heat exchangers do not allow routine maintenance to be performed by standard procedures, so extended surfaces will be omitted and hydraulic diameters will be kept in the minichannel regime (minimum channel dimension between 200 μm and 3 mm) to allow for high-frequency eddy current inspection methods to be developed. Rather than using a “checkerboard” channel pattern, which requires complex header designs among other design challenges, row composition is homogeneous, and the borders between adjoining channels are removed to provide high aspect ratio rectangular channel cross-sections. Various plant layouts of smaller heat exchanger banks in a “modular” design are introduced, and the feasibility of casting such modules is assumed to be possible for the purposes of this research. FLUENT was used within ANSYS Workbench to find optimized heat transfer and hydrodynamic performance for straight-channel designs with two molten salts acting in pure counter-flow. Limiting the pressure drop to roughly that of ORNL’s Molten Salt Breeder Reactor’s shell-and-tube design, the compact heat exchanger design of interest in this study will lessen volume requirements, lower fuel salt volume, and decrease material usage. Compact heat exchangers have shown commercial feasibility in several industries but have yet to be assimilated into the nuclear industry. This intermediately-sized compact minichannel heat exchanger demonstrates that such a heat exchanger is viable for further testing. The original design of the MSR was an engineering marvel over 60 years ago, but several of its key components, namely the intermediate heat exchanger, must be updated in order for the MSR to reach its full potential.


2000 ◽  
Vol 53 (7) ◽  
pp. 175-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. S. Mehendale ◽  
A. M. Jacobi ◽  
R. K. Shah

By their very nature, compact heat exchangers allow an efficient use of material, volume, and energy in thermal systems. These benefits have driven heat exchanger design toward higher compactness, and the trend toward ultra-compact designs will continue. Highly compact surfaces can be manufactured using micro-machining and other modern technologies. In this paper, unresolved thermal-hydraulic issues related to ultra-compact designs are discussed, and the status of the technologies required for the production of ultra-compact structured surfaces is summarized. This review article includes 67 references.


Author(s):  
George Hall ◽  
James Marthinuss

This paper will discuss air-cooled compact heat exchanger design using published data. Kays & London’s “Compact Heat Exchangers” [1] contains measured heat transfer and pressure drop data on a variety of circular and rectangular passages including circular tubes, tube banks, straight fins, louvered fins, strip or lanced offset fins, wavy fins and pin fins. While “Compact Heat Exchangers” is the benchmark for air cooled heat exchanger test data it makes no attempt to summarize the results or steer the thermal designer to an optimized design based on the different factors or combination of heat transfer, pressure drop, size, weight, or even cost. Using this reduced data and the analytical solutions provided highly efficient compact heat exchangers could be designed. This paper will guide a thermal engineer toward this optimized design without having to run trade studies on every possible heat exchanger design configuration. Typical applications of published fin data in the aerospace and military electronics include electronics cold plates, card rack walls and air-to-air heat exchangers using fan driven and ECS driven air. Airborne electronics often require extremely dense packaging techniques to fit all the required functions into the available volume. While leaving little room for cooling hardware this also drives power densities up to levels (20 W/sq-cm) that require highly efficient heat transfer techniques. Several design issues are discussed including pressure drop, heat transfer, compactness, axial conduction, flow distribution and passage irregularities (bosses). Comparisons between fin performance are made and conclusions are drawn about the applicability of each type of fin to avionics thermal management.


2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 137-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafał Andrzejczyk ◽  
Tomasz Muszyński

Abstract The shell and coil heat exchangers are commonly used in heating, ventilation, nuclear industry, process plant, heat recovery and air conditioning systems. This type of recuperators benefits from simple construction, the low value of pressure drops and high heat transfer. In helical coil, centrifugal force is acting on the moving fluid due to the curvature of the tube results in the development. It has been long recognized that the heat transfer in the helical tube is much better than in the straight ones because of the occurrence of secondary flow in planes normal to the main flow inside the helical structure. Helical tubes show good performance in heat transfer enhancement, while the uniform curvature of spiral structure is inconvenient in pipe installation in heat exchangers. Authors have presented their own construction of shell and tube heat exchanger with intensified heat transfer. The purpose of this article is to assess the influence of the surface modification over the performance coefficient and effectiveness. The experiments have been performed for the steady-state heat transfer. Experimental data points were gathered for both laminar and turbulent flow, both for co current- and countercurrent flow arrangement. To find optimal heat transfer intensification on the shell-side authors applied the number of transfer units analysis.


1992 ◽  
Vol 114 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Osweiller

For about 40 years most tubesheet exchangers have been designed according to the standards of TEMA. Partly due to their simplicity, these rules do not assure a safe heat-exchanger design in all cases. This is the main reason why new tubesheet design rules were developed in 1981 in France for the French pressure vessel code CODAP. For fixed tubesheet heat exchangers, the new rules account for the “elastic rotational restraint” of the shell and channel at the outer edge of the tubesheet, as proposed in 1959 by Galletly. For floating-head and U-tube heat exchangers, the approach developed by Gardner in 1969 was selected with some modifications. In both cases, the tubesheet is replaced by an equivalent solid plate with adequate effective elastic constants, and the tube bundle is simulated by an elastic foundation. The elastic restraint at the edge of the tubesheet due the shell and channel is accounted for in different ways in the two types of heat exchangers. The purpose of the paper is to present the main basis of these rules and to compare them to TEMA rules.


Author(s):  
Jian Zhou ◽  
Ming Ding ◽  
Haozhi Bian ◽  
Yinxing Zhang ◽  
Zhongning Sun

The parallel compact heat exchangers have been widely applied in the various fields such as heat exchangers in chemical engineering, the solar collector, fuel cells and the passive removal heat exchanger in passive containment cooling system (PCCS), etc. The heat exchangers in the PCCS removes out the heat brought by the steam coming out from the broken reactor or primary cooling system. Therefore, the performance of the passive containment cooling system heat exchanger (PCCS HX) will greatly influence the safety and integrity of the containment. In previous investigations on the parallel compact heat exchangers, attentions are focused on the pressure distribution and flow distribution in the heat exchangers. A bad flow distribution in the heat exchanger will reduce the heat performance. More seriously, the coolant in some tubes may boils and the tubes will be overheated, resulting in explosion of tubes. Therefore, the characteristic of pressure distribution and the flow distribution should be investigated for a uniform flow distribution. In the past studies of the compact heat exchangers, the numbers of tube are almost under 72 which is relatively small, while the number of tubes PCCS HX is usually over than 100. And the pressure distribution in compact heat exchangers is assumed that the pressure recovery plays a leading role. However, the more numbers of tube will bring more flow maldistribution, if the geometry design is selected inappropriately. The reverse flow may occur in the heat exchanger, which means that in some tubes, the coolant flows from the tube outlet to the inlet. This phenomenon of reverse flow have never been mentioned in previous studies. The occurrence of the reverse flow will significantly decrease the performance of the heat exchanger and cause a bad influence on the safety of the containment. In the PCCS, the Z-type heat exchanger is one of the choice of PCCS HX (heat exchanger) design. Therefore, the present study focus on the characteristic of reverse flow phenomenon in Z-type heat exchangers. The pressure distribution and the flow distribution have been separately investigated deeply. The conclusion of this study will provide a guide to the geometry design of the PCCS HX with large number of tubes.


2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard G. Carranza

Important auxiliary equations are presented that are typically used in compact heat exchanger research. These relationships are presented only for selected compact heat exchangers — bare pipe, helically finned pipe, plate finned pipe, spined pipe, and plate exchangers. The equations primarily address issues relating to heat exchanger geometry, surface area to volume ratio, and fin efficiency. Furthermore, they are organized in a systematic manner and consolidated in one central location for easy reference.


Author(s):  
Michel De Paepe ◽  
Christophe T’Joen ◽  
Arnold Janssens ◽  
Marijke Steeman

Earth-air heat exchangers are often used for (pre)heating or (pre)cooling of ventilation air in low energy or passive house standard buildings. Several studies have been published in the passed about the performance of these earth-air heat exchangers [1–8]. Often this is done in relation to the building energy use. Several software codes are available with which the behaviour of the earth-air heat exchanger can be simulated. De Paepe and Janssens published a simplified design methodology for earth-air heat exchangers, based on thermal to hydraulic performance optimisation [7]. Through dynamic simulations and measurements it was shown that the methodology is quite conservative [9–10]. Hollmu¨ller added an earth-air heat exchanger model to TRNSYS [11]. In stead of using earth-air heat exchangers, earth-water heat exchangers are now getting more attention. In this system the ventilation air is indirectly cooled/heated with the water flow in a fin-tube heat exchanger in the inlet of the ventilation channel. The water-glycol mixture transfers heat with the earth by flowing through e.g. a polyethylene tube. In the second part of this paper a design methodology is first derived and then applied to this type of system.


Author(s):  
Ibrahim Khalil ◽  
Ahmad Abu Heiba ◽  
Robert Boehm

Plate fin heat exchangers (PFHE) are characterized by very close temperature approaches and high thermal effectiveness, large heat transfer area per unit volume, low weight per unit transfer and possibility of heat exchange between many process streams. These advantages are only limited by operating fluid temperatures and pressures. The main target of this paper is to study the performance of plate fin compact heat exchangers and to provide full explanation of previous comparison methods of compact heat exchanger surfaces (plain, strip, louvered, wavy, pin, perforated and vortex) used in plate fin compact heat exchangers. We generalize these methods to identify the advantages and disadvantages of each type of geometry (more than sixty geometries studied) based on required size, entropy generation, pumping power, weight, and cost. The effect of using different surfaces on each side of the heat exchanger and design recommendations are also discussed.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document