Modelling the PbLi flow including tritium transport and permeation with GETTHEM

Abstract

One of the main challenges to be addressed to achieve a reliable electricity production from the EU DEMO reactor is the realization of a closed fuel cycle, for which a suitable Tritium Extraction and Removal System (TERS) is required. One of the possible technologies identified for the EU DEMO TERS is the Permeator Against Vacuum (PAV): the tritium dissolved in the liquid PbLi flowing within several parallel channels will permeate towards the vacuum pumped on the other side of the channel wall (the membrane).A recently-developed model of the tritium permeation across the membrane in the PAV, involving both transport phenomena in the wall and surface processes, was already used to size the EU DEMO PAV. However, besides the component itself, it is important to properly define the interfaces of the PAV in the TERS, and of the TERS in the entire PbLi and tritium loops. The model of such a complex system is therefore implemented here in the Modelica object-oriented language used by system-level tool GETTHEM, that already includes a model of the PbLi loop. The resulting, lumped-parameter component will be able to capture the thermal-hydraulic behaviour of the PbLi, to model the tritium transport in the fluid and to estimate the tritium permeated flux supplied to the tritium processing. Such a model is tested here on a sub-scale circuit to demonstrate its capability to simulate the operation of the EU DEMO TERS using the GETTHEM code.As the physical parameters of the model are subject to a large uncertainty, an uncertainty propagation analysis is also performed, to have a preliminary quantification of the impact of such uncertainties on the model output and, therefore, on the TERS efficiency, and to drive further investigations of these physical properties. In particular, results show how the uncertainty on the solubility constant of hydrogen in PbLi represents the dominant contribution on the total variance, highlighting the need for a better accuracy of such parameter.