Evaluation of thermophoretic effects on graphite dust coagulation in high-temperature gas-cooled reactors

Abstract

In high-temperature gas-cooled reactors, graphite dust particles within the reactor core and the heat transfer equipment experience large temperature gradients. Under such conditions, thermophoresis may play an important role in determining aerosol evolution. This study presents a theoretical and numerical analysis of the thermophoretic effects on aerosol coagulation within these reactors. The coagulation rates for Brownian versus thermophoretic coagulation are calculated and compared for various temperature gradients. Our results show that thermophoretic coagulation dominates over Brownian coagulation for large temperature gradients. We defined an enhancement factor to evaluate the role of thermophoretic coagulation under various reactor conditions. The enhancement factor increased dramatically with increasing temperature gradient, decreasing pressure and increasing particle diameter, but was not very sensitive to temperature change. The time evolution of the particle size distribution related to combined Brownian and thermophoretic coagulation was simulated using a log-skew-normal method of moments. The simulation results indicate that aerosol evolution can be strongly accelerated by thermophoretic coagulation under large temperature gradients.