|Table of Contents|

Effective thermal conductivity model applied in pellet bed reactors for nuclear thermal propulsion(PDF)

《火箭推进》[ISSN:1672-9374/CN:CN 61-1436/V]

Issue:
2024年04期
Page:
94-102
Research Field:
目次
Publishing date:

Info

Title:
Effective thermal conductivity model applied in pellet bed reactors for nuclear thermal propulsion
Author(s):
YOU Ersheng1;  LI Yiyi1;  WANG Tianmi1;  XING Dianchuan1;  JI Yu2;  XU Jianjun1
1. CNNC Key Laboratory of Nuclear Reactor Thermal Hydraulics Technology,Nuclear Power Institute of China(NPIC), Chengdu 610213, China; 2. Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Keywords:
effective thermal conductivity;  model application;  pellet bed reactors;  nuclear thermal propulsion
PACS:
TL99
DOI:
10.3969/j.issn.1672-9374.2024.04.009
Abstract:
Nuclear thermal propulsion(NTP)is a new-type nuclear reactor application which chooses hydrogen gas as the working medium, heated by fuel pellets in the reactor core to extremely high temperature, so as to achieve huge thrust and high specific impulse. Based on the typical design of reactor core in American NTP rocket engine programs, the effective thermal conductivity model of high temperature gas-cooled reactors was used and preliminary applied, for the analysis of the pellet bed mixed with smaller fuel particles and higher temperature hydrogen gas. The influences of fuel type, pellet diameter and pellet bed porosity on the thermal conductivity of the reactor core were also obtained in this paper. Meanwhile, considering that the fuel pellet was usually coated by multi-layers with different materials, the homogenization method was used for equivalent calculation in thermal properties of these materials, aimed to provide the average thermal conductivity parameters of solid domain for the effective thermal conductivity model. According to the calculation results, the pellet diameter and pellet bed porosity have a greater impact on the effective thermal conductivity, relative to the components thermal conductivity, especially under high temperature conditions that the radiation heat transfer is dominant.

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