Heat Transfer Enhancement in Subchannel Geometry of Pressurized Water Reactor Using Water-Based Yttrium Oxide Nanofluid

Abstract

Simulation of Computational Fluid Dynamic is applied to present the thermal performance of water-based Yttrium oxide nanofluid in subchannel of pressurized water reactor (PWR) system. Thermal hydraulic aspect such as pressure drop and heat transfer are estimated in typical conditions of pressurized water with flow rates ranged (20×103≤Re≤80×103) using fresh water (0 %vol.) and different volume fraction of water-Yttrium oxide nanofluid (2 and 4% vol.) as coolant fluid. Results were obtained and compared with correlations of single-phase pressure drop and convective heat transfer for the case of fully developed turbulent flow. The addition of Yttrium oxide nanoparticles to the coolant fluid in pressurized water reactor led to increase in convective heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop. Increasing the nanoparticle volume fraction of (2 and 4% vol.) causing an increase in the average Nu by 3.46% and 7.61%, respectively. The CFD model established in ANSYS software was validated by comparing the pressure drop of CFD results with Blasius correlation and Nu with Ma¨ıga et al. correlation and gave a good agreement.