Modeling of the Supercritical Steam Generator of MHTGR in Engineering Simulator

Abstract

The Modular High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor (MHTGR) could realize higher efficiency and lower costs by developing the multi-modular high temperature gas-cooled reactors combined with supercritical steam turbine unit. The coupling effects among different modules are crucial to the designs and operation analyses of the multi-modular reactors. By establishing the engineering simulator for multi-modular reactors, the coupling effects can be studied and optimized to advance the reactor designs, due to the advantages of real-time calculations and coupled calculations. As key energy transfer equipment, the steam generator is very important to the reactor operation, and focused in the modeling of the engineering simulator system for multi-modular reactors. In this paper, the once-through steam generator consisted of helical coils was modeled and optimized in the vPower integrated simulation platform. From the detailed analyses of the distributions of temperatures, heat flux, and other parameters along the heat transfer tubes, it showed that the steam generator model well presented the supercritical water properties and heat transfer characteristics inside helical tubes. Also, the heat transfer correlations of the supercritical water inside helical tubes were investigated, discussed and also compared to test the uncertainty and influence to the whole steam generator model. And the results indicated that most heat transfer correlations showed similar results and had little effect on the primary side in the steady state operation condition. In future work, the model and heat transfer characteristics of the supercritical steam generator will be further tested in more transients and integrated into complete engineering simulator for multi-module reactors.