Conceptual design and supporting analysis of a double wall heat exchanger for an ARC-class fusion reactor Primary cooling system

Abstract

In the fight against climate change through the progress of fusion technology, the Affordable, Robust and Compact (ARC) fusion reactor design is under development at Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)- Plasma Science and Fusion Center, in collaboration with the Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi (ENI) S.p.A. The reactor features demountable superconducting toroidal field coils and a replaceable vacuum vessel immersed in a Fluorine Lithium Beryllium (FLiBe) molten salt blanket. The low-pressure molten salt cools the divertors and the blanket, shields the magnets and acts as tritium breeder and tritium carrier. Tritium must be recovered efficiently from the salt to fuel the reactor, minimizing its inventory and its migration outside the FLiBe loop. The current work is aimed at presenting a preliminary design of a Double-Wall Heat eXchanger (DWHX) to be installed in an ARC-class reactor primary cooling system. The main feature is the presence of a flowing sweep gas gap which captures tritium and prevents its diffusion toward the secondary system. For the DWHX, thermal-hydraulic and tritium transport analyses were performed, considering a supercritical water Rankine power conversion system on the secondary side to carry out the calculations. To assess tritium extraction capabilities of the DWHX, the tritium extraction efficiency has been evaluated. Calculation results highlighted how the current configuration is not adequate to remove tritium, in fact the tritium extraction efficiency is very low. On the other side, it seems to act adequately as tritium permeation barrier.