Design and experiment of hot gas duct for the HTR-10

Abstract

A horizontal coaxial double-tube hot gas duct is a key component connecting the reactor pressure vessel and the steam generator pressure vessel for the 10 MW High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor—Test Module. Hot helium gas from the core outlet flows into the steam generator through the liner tube, while helium gas after being cooled returns to the core through a passage formed between the inner tube and the duct pressure vessel. Thermal insulation material is packed into the space between the liner tube and the inner tube to resist heat transfer from the hot helium to the cold helium. The thermal compensation structure is designed in order to avoid large thermal stress because of different thermal expansions of the duct parts under various conditions. According to the design principal of the hot gas duct, the detailed structure design and strength evaluation for it has been done. A full-scale duct test section was then made according to the design parameters, and its thermal performance experiment was carried out in a helium test loop. With helium gas at pressure of about 3.0 MPa and a temperature over 900 °C, the continuous operation time for the duct test section lasted 98 h. At a helium gas temperature over 700 °C, the cumulative operation time for the duct test section reached 350 h. The duct test section also experienced 20 pressure cycles in the pressure range of 0.1–3.4 MPa, 18 temperature cycles in the temperature range of 100–950 °C. Thermal test results show an effective thermal conductivity of the hot gas duct thermal insulation is 0.47 W m −1 °C −1 under normal operation condition. In addition, a hot gas duct depressurization test was carried out; the test result showed that the pressure variation occurred on the liner tube was not more than 0.2 MPa for an assumed maximum gas release rate.