Abstract
At present, the U.S. Fusion Engineering Systems Study (FESS) considers several cooling/breeding concepts that utilize flowing liquid metals (LMs), Li, or eutectic PbLi alloy as working fluids for implementation of these concepts in the Fusion Nuclear Science Facility (FNSF). In this paper, we review recent modeling activities aimed at the investigation of LM flows and heat transfer relevant to the FESS-FNSF program. In particular, considerations are given to (1) development and validation & verification of computational magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) codes, (2) characterization of critical coupled MHD/heat transfer phenomena, and (3) design and analysis for selected LM applications in the FNSF. Under these three research thrusts, the reviewed topics including the MHD code HyPerComp Incompressible MHD solver for Arbitrary Geometries (HIMAG), MHD mixed-convection flows, MHD pressure drop in the blanket inlet/outlet manifolds, PbLi flows in a thermal convection loop, MHD PbLi flows in a dual-coolant lead-lithium blanket prototype, and a design window for a flowing Li divertor with He-cooled substrate.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 745-760 |
| Number of pages | 16 |
| Journal | Fusion Science and Technology |
| Volume | 77 |
| Issue number | 7-8 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2021 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Funding
At present, almost all MHD flow/heat transfer analyses for LM systems in the FNSF are performed with the help of the HyPerComp Incompressible MHD solver for Arbitrary Geometries (HIMAG) code, which is a parallel, time accurate MHD solver for three-dimensional (3-D) closed and free-surface flows on unstructured and hybrid meshes. HIMAG was developed at HyPerComp, Inc., in collaboration with the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Fusion Science and Technology Center and supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). HIMAG seeks to efficiently model MHD flows and heat and mass transfer at fusion-relevant conditions. HIMAG and its supporting modules in heat and mass transfer are based on a robust Crank-Nicholson finite volume fractional time-stepping method. A point implicit strategy and local iterations are used to converge nonlinear steps. A parallel conjugate gradient method is used to solve Poisson equations. The UCLA team (SS, TR, and YJ) acknowledges financial support from the subcontract between UCLA and ORNL number 4000171188 and from DOE grant DE-SC0020979. SS is grateful to his collaborators from EUROfusion (Leo Bühler, Chiara Mistrangelo, Alessandro Tassone, and Fernando Urgorri) and to his Chinese colleagues (MingJiu Ni and Long Chen) for valuable discussions within the topic of this paper.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Fusion Science and Technology Center | |
| U.S. Department of Energy | DE-SC0020979 |
| Oak Ridge National Laboratory | 4000171188 |
| University of California, Los Angeles |
Keywords
- Fusion Nuclear Science Facility
- blanket
- divertor
- liquid metal
- magnetohydrodynamic flow
