Abstract
To support the development of Generation IV nuclear reactors, in-pile and out-of-pile test loops with miniature, submersible direct-current electromagnetic pumps (DC-EMPs) are used to investigate compatibility and corrosion issues of nuclear fuel and structure materials with flowing molten lead and alkali liquid metals. Owing to the absence of detailed experimental measurements and because of its simplicity and low computational cost, the equivalent circuit model (ECM) is widely used to predict the pump characteristics. The simplifying assumptions in the ECM contribute to overpredicting the pump characteristics by >10%. To gain insight into the pump operation and assess the effect of various assumptions in ECM, not possible even experimentally, this work performed three-dimensional (3-D), magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) analyses of a 66.8-mm-diameter, submersible, dual-stage DC-EMP, recently developed by the authors, for circulating molten Pb and liquid Na at up to 500°C. The solution of the coupled electromagnetism equations and the momentum and energy balance equations calculates the pump characteristics and provides 3-D images of the flow, electric current, and magnetic field strength distributions in the flow duct. The grid convergence index (GCI) criterion confirmed the adequacy of the employed numerical mesh refinement and the results conversion. Results demonstrate strong dependence of the magnetic field strength distribution in the flow duct on the value and the distribution of the electric current but negligible effects of the fluid temperature on joule heating and pump characteristics. The Lorentz force highest densities occur at the entrance of the two pumping stages, and approximately 10.0% of the total force occurs in the fringe regions upstream and downstream of pumping stages. The MHD pump characteristics are in general agreement with, but consistently lower than, the ECM predictions. For molten lead and liquid sodium, the difference between the calculated characteristics increases with increased flow rate and input current, up to 12% and 14%, respectively.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1320-1346 |
| Number of pages | 27 |
| Journal | Nuclear Science and Engineering |
| Volume | 198 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2024 |
Funding
This is partially funded by Battelle Energy Alliance, LLC award number DE-AC07-051D14517 to The University of New Mexico (UNM) and by the UNM\u2019s Institute for Space and Nuclear Power Studies. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Department of Energy or Battelle Energy Alliance, LLC. We thank The University of New Mexico\u2019s Center for Advanced Research Computing, supported in part by the National Science Foundation, for providing access to the high-performance computing capabilities used in this work. This research also made use of the resources of the High-Performance Computing Center at Idaho National Laboratory, which is supported by the Office of Nuclear Energy of the U.S. Department of Energy and the Nuclear Science User Facilities.
Keywords
- 3-D magnetohydrodynamic analyses
- Miniature
- dual-stage direct-current electromagnetic pump
- equivalent circuit model
- heavy and alkali liquid metals