Spacer effects on thermal-hydraulic performance of fluid flow at supercritical pressure in annular channel - CFD methodology

Satish Kumar Dhurandhar; S. L. Sinha; Shashi Kant Verma

doi:10.15282/jmes.16.1.2022.10.0693

Authors

S.K. Dhurandhar Mechanical Engineering Department, National Institute of Technology Raipur, Raipur (C.G)-492010, India. Phone: +919300270626
S. L. Sinha Mechanical Engineering Department, National Institute of Technology Raipur, Raipur (C.G)-492010, India. Phone: +919300270626
S.K. Verma Cryopump and Pellet Injector Division and Advanced Computer Simulation Group, Institute for Plasma Research, Gandhinagar-382428, Gujarat, India

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15282/jmes.16.1.2022.10.0693

Keywords:

Heat transfer performance, spacer, numerical simulation, supercritical pressure, annulus flow, flow characteristic

Abstract

Spacer is a vital component in assembly of nuclear fuel rod bundles. It is used to support and maintain suitable distance between the rods in assembly of nuclear fuel bundle. Spacer promotes the local heat transfer in downstream to the spacer in rod bundle. The objective of present work is to analyse the spacer effects on thermal and hydraulic performance of R-134a at supercritical condition of pressure 4.5 MPa in an annular flow. A Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code ANSYS Fluent has been used for present numerical analysis and SST (Shear Stress Transport) k-ω turbulence model was considered for turbulence flow analysis. Numerical analysis was carried out in an annular channel of 6 mm hydraulic diameter with spacer, located at middle of channel. Hydraulic and thermal performance due to the spacer have been investigated for three different mass flow rates (0.33175, 0.41469 and 0.53909 kg/s) and three different heat fluxes (60, 100 and 160 kW/m² ). Two blockage ratios of 0.3 and 0.38 have been used in present analysis. Due to the presence of spacer as flow obstruction, it is observed that at spacer location, velocity increased significantly and subsequent decrease in pressure. Also; it is noticed that the wall temperature is decreased and corresponding coefficient of heat transfer enhanced significantly at the location of spacer in annular channel. The observed value of ratio of Nusselt number for the case of spacer and without spacer (Nu/Nu*) shows better agreement with correlations data for flow obstacle at Re=97000.

References

K. M. Krall and E. M. Sparrow, “Turbulent heat transfer in the separated, reattached, and redevelopment regions of a circular tube,” Journal of Heat Transfer, vol. 88, no. 1, pp. 131–136, 1966.

K. K. Koram and E. M. Sparrow, “Turbulent heat transfer downstream of an unsymmetric blockage in a tube,” Journal of Heat Transfer, vol. 100, no. 4, pp. 588–594, 1978.

X. Zhu, S. Morooka, and Y. Oka, “Numerical investigation of grid spacer effect on heat transfer of supercritical water flows in a tight rod bundle,” International Journal of Thermal Sciences, vol. 76, pp. 245–257, 2014.

Y. Xiao, J. Pan, and H. Gu, “Numerical investigation of spacer effects on heat transfer of supercritical fluid flow in an annular channel,” International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, vol. 121, pp. 343–353, 2018.

A. Eter, D. Groeneveld, and S. Tavoularis, “Convective heat transfer in supercritical flows of CO2 in tubes with and without flow obstacles,” Nuclear Engineering and Design, vol. 313, pp. 162–176, 2017.

A. Tanase and D. C. Groeneveld, “An experimental investigation on the effects of flow obstacles on single phase heat transfer,” Nuclear Engineering and Design, vol. 288, pp. 195–207, 2015.

M. v Holloway, H. L. McClusky, D. E. Beasley, and M. E. Conner, “The effect of support grid features on local, single-phase heat transfer measurements in rod bundles,” Journal of Heat Transfer, vol. 126, no. 1, pp. 43–53, 2004.

S. C. Yao, L. E. Hochreiter, and W. J. Leech, “Heat-transfer augmentation in rod bundles near grid spacers,” Journal of Heat Transfer, vol. 104, no. 1, pp. 76–81, 1982.

M. Yao, M. Nakatani, and K. Suzuki, “Flow visualization and heat transfer experiments in a turbulent channel flow obstructed with an inserted square rod,” International Journal of Heat and Fluid Flow, vol. 16, no. 5, pp. 389–397, 1995.

S. Doerffer, D. C. Groeneveld, and J. R. Schenk, “Experimental study of the effects of flow inserts on heat transfer and critical heat flux,” in Proceedings of the 4th Int. Conference on Nuclear Engineering, 10-13 March 1996, New Orleans, United State.

D. J. Miller, F. B. Cheung, and S. M. Bajorek, “On the development of a grid-enhanced single-phase convective heat transfer correlation,” Nuclear Engineering and Design, vol. 264, pp. 56–60, 2013.

H.-Y. Gu, Z.-X. Hu, D. Liu, H.-B. Li, M. Zhao, and X. Cheng, “Experimental study on heat transfer to supercritical water in 2×2 rod bundle with wire wraps,” Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science, vol. 70, pp. 17–28, 2016.

S. K. Yang and M. K. Chung, “Turbulent flow through spacer grids in rod bundles,” Journal of Fluids Engineering, vol. 120, no. 4, pp. 786–791, 1998.

D. Caraghiaur, H. Anglart, and W. Frid, “Experimental investigation of turbulent flow through spacer grids in fuel rod bundles,” Nuclear Engineering and Design, vol. 239, no. 10, pp. 2013–2021, 2009.

H. Wang, Q. Bi, Z. Yang, W. Gang, and R. Hu, “Experimental and numerical study on the enhanced effect of spiral spacer to heat transfer of supercritical pressure water in vertical annular channels,” Applied Thermal Engineering, vol. 48, pp. 436–445, 2012.

D. Palko and H. Anglart, “Theoretical and numerical study of heat transfer deterioration in high performance light water reactor,” Science and Technology of Nuclear Installations, vol. 2008, p. 405072, 2008.

M. Jaromin and H. Anglart, “A numerical study of heat transfer to supercritical water flowing upward in vertical tubes under normal and deteriorated conditions,” Nuclear Engineering and Design, vol. 264, pp. 61–70, 2013.

H. Cheng, J. Zhao, and M. K. Rowinski, “Study on two wall temperature peaks of supercritical fluid mixed convective heat transfer in circular tubes,” International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, vol. 113, pp. 257–267, 2017.

Y. Xiao, J. Li, J. Deng, X. Gao, H. Gu, and J. Pan, “Study of spacer effects on deteriorated heat transfer of supercritical fluid flow in an annulus,” Progress in Nuclear Energy, vol. 123, p. 103306, 2020.

S. Zhang, H. Gu, X. Cheng, and Z. Xiong, “Experimental study on heat transfer of supercritical Freon flowing upward in a circular tube,” Nuclear Engineering and Design, vol. 280, pp. 305–315, 2014.

C.-R. Zhao and P.-X. Jiang, “Experimental study of in-tube cooling heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics of R134a at supercritical pressures,” Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science, vol. 35, no. 7, pp. 1293–1303, 2011.

C. Eze, K. W. Wong, T. Gschnaidtne, J. Cai, and J. Zhao, “Numerical study of effects of vortex generators on heat transfer deterioration of supercritical water upward flow,” International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, vol. 137, pp. 489–505, 2019.

Z. Hu and H. Gu, “Heat transfer of supercritical water in annuli with spacers,” International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, vol. 120, pp. 411–421, 2018.

K. Podila and Y. Rao, “Computational fluid dynamic simulations of heat transfer from a 2 × 2 wire-wrapped fuel rod bundle to supercritical pressure water,” Journal of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Science, vol. 4, no. 1, 2017.

K. Podila and Y. Rao, “CFD modelling of supercritical water flow and heat transfer in a 2×2 fuel rod bundle,” Nuclear Engineering and Design, vol. 301, pp. 279–289, 2016.

L. K. H. Leung, Y. Rao, and K. Podila, “Assessment of computational tools in support of heat-transfer correlation development for fuel assembly of canadian supercritical water-cooled reactor,” Journal of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Science, vol. 2, no. 1, 2015.

H. Wang, L. K. H. Leung, W. Wang, and Q. Bi, “A review on recent heat transfer studies to supercritical pressure water in channels,” Applied Thermal Engineering, vol. 142, pp. 573–596, 2018.

Y. Wang et al., “CFD simulation of flow and heat transfer characteristics in a 5×5 fuel rod bundles with spacer grids of advanced PWR,” Nuclear Engineering and Technology, vol. 52, no. 7, pp. 1386–1395, 2020.

X. Li, D. Chen, and L. Hu, “Numerical investigation on mixing performance in rod bundle with spacer grid based on anisotropic turbulent mixing model,” International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, vol. 130, pp. 843–856, 2019.

H. Mao, B.-W. Yang, B. Han, and A. Liu, “Modeling of spacer grid mixing effects through mixing vane crossflow model in subchannel analysis,” Nuclear Engineering and Design, vol. 320, pp. 141–152, 2017.

B. Končar and S. Košmrlj, “Simulation of turbulent flow in MATIS-H rod bundle with split-type mixing vanes,” Nuclear Engineering and Design, vol. 327, pp. 112–126, 2018.

P. Zhao, T. Wan, Y. Jin, Z. Chen, Y. Li, and C. Peng, “Direct numerical simulation analysis of heat transfer deterioration of supercritical fluids in a vertical tube at a high ratio of heat flux to mass flowrate,” Physics of Fluids, vol. 33, no. 5, p. 55114, 2021.

X. Chu and E. Laurien, “Direct numerical simulation of heated turbulent pipe flow at supercritical pressure,” Journal of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Science, vol. 2, no. 3, 2016.