Preliminary Assessment of Additively Manufactured Cooling Channel Performance for Helium-Cooled Blanket Concepts

Cody S. Wiggins, Chris Crawford, Monica L. Gehrig, Charles Kessel, Chase Joslin

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Sufficient cooling of the blanket first wall remains a critical challenge for the design and deployment of fusion power plants. Helium has been targeted as a potential blanket coolant due to its inertness and low neutron interactivity, among other advantages. However, the low thermal mass of helium creates a need for heat transfer enhancements in coolant channels to provide adequate cooling to the blanket's first wall. Toward this end, a series of ribbed flow channels of various rib cross sections and configurations has been produced via additive manufacturing (AM) to study the efficacy of AM for first wall heat transfer enhancement and the optimization of heat transfer geometries. Helium cooling performance is studied in AM test articles at 4 MPa operating pressure, Reynolds numbers up to 197000, and outer surface heat fluxes up to 42 kW/m2 in the recently commissioned helium flow loop experiment (HFLE). Preliminary results of this study are presented herein. Heat transfer performance of nominally smooth (i.e., featureless) AM channels is quantified via measured Nusselt numbers and friction factors and compared to off-the-shelf smooth pipe experiments. Results are compared to existing correlations and used to discuss the effects of the AM processes on thermal-hydraulic performance. It is seen that the inherent roughness of the AM channels leads to an increase in both heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop when compared to the conventional pipe. Recommendations are made for future studies based on these findings and additional considerations for the deployment of AM blanket cooling components.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)3644-3650
Number of pages7
JournalIEEE Transactions on Plasma Science
Volume52
Issue number9
DOIs
StatePublished - 2024

Funding

This work was supported in part by UT-Battelle, LLC, with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), under Contract DE-AC05-00OR22725; and in part by U.S. DOE Fusion Energy Sciences Postdoctoral Research Program administered by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) for the DOE, ORISE is managed by Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) under Contract DE-SC0014664. Thermal conductivity measurements were provided by Stephanie Curlin and Hsin Wang of the ORNL Material Science and Technology Division. Preliminary work toward the 3-D printing of these test sections was performed by Michael Kirka of the ORNL Manufacturing Sciences Division. The U.S. Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the U.S. Government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for U.S. Government purposes. DOE will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan (http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-publicaccess- plan). All opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the policies and views of DOE, ORAU, or ORISE.

Keywords

  • Additive manufacturing (AM)
  • breeding blanket
  • fusion engineering
  • heat transfer enhancement
  • helium cooling
  • thermal hydraulics

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