Abstract
A new type of Water Lead Lithium Cooled (WLLC) blanket that adopts the modular design scheme, water cooling the structure components, liquid PbLi as breeder and coolant, and SiC as the thermal insulator between PbLi and structures is under development as a candidate blanket concept for the Chinese Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR). Based on a poloidal-radial slice model, thermal hydraulic analysis is performed for this blanket to validate the feasibility of design goals. Results show that the present design can achieve the outlet temperature in the range of 600–700 °C, with all the material temperatures safely below the upper limits. A series of sensitivity analyses are also carried out. It indicates that the thermal conductivity (TC) of SiC would have a significant influence on the temperature field, streamlines and pressure drop; that is, lower TC of SiC can maintain the temperature of PbLi at a high level, and induce an increased number of vortices in the liquid PbLi flow as well as a larger pressure drop. On this basis, the joint effects of the TC of SiC and inlet velocity on the performance of blanket thermal hydraulics are analyzed, then the so-called “attainable region” is proposed. Finally, optimization design studies are carried out by decreasing the width of the front channel. Comparison results show that the present design is the most reasonable.
Highlights
The thermal conductivity of SiC has considerable effects on heat transfer between PbLi and water, and former researchers optimized this parameter as 3.5 W/(m·◦ C) to have better performance of thermal and electrical insulation [24]
(15.5 MPa, 285/325 ◦ C) cooling the structural components, liquid PbLi as breeder and coolant, and SiC as thermal insulator between PbLi and the structures is being under development for the Chinese Fusion Engineering Test Reactor
The thermal hydraulic analysis based on a poloidal-radial slice model is performed for this
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. These problems may be overcome by using the mature Reduced Activation Ferritic Martensite (RAFM) steel as the structural material, which is cooled below 550 ◦ C by gas or water This blanket design is divided into self-cooled and separately cooled concepts, respectively, depending on the velocity level (~10 mm/s or ~1 mm/s) of liquid PbLi. The self-cooled blanket uses PbLi as tritium carrier and coolant, which is circulated at a large velocity towards the external heat exchanger, the Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) effect is inevitable. The water lead lithium cooled blanket (WLLC) is being under development as a candidate blanket concept for CFETR It adopts the self-cooled design, which uses pressurized water (15.5 MPa, 285/325 ◦ C) removing heat from the structural components, and liquid.
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