Nuclear Engineering and Technology

Korean Nuclear Society (한국원자력학회)
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Off-design performance evaluation of multistage axial gas turbines for a closed Brayton cycle of sodium-cooled fast reactor

  • Jae Hyun Choi (Department of Mechanical Engineering, POSTECH) ;
  • Jung Yoon (Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute) ;
  • Sungkun Chung (Department of Mechanical Engineering, POSTECH) ;
  • Namhyeong Kim (Division of Advanced Nuclear Engineering, POSTECH) ;
  • HangJin Jo (Department of Mechanical Engineering, POSTECH)
  • Received : 2022.11.20
  • Accepted : 2023.04.12
  • Published : 2023.07.25
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Abstract

In this study, the validity of reducing the number of gas turbine stages designed for a nitrogen Brayton cycle coupled to a sodium-cooled fast reactor was assessed. The turbine performance was evaluated through computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations under different off-design conditions controlled by a reduced flow rate and reduced rotational speed. Two different multistage gas turbines designed to extract almost the same specific work were selected: two- and three-stage turbines (mid-span stage loading coefficient: 1.23 and 1.0, respectively). Real gas properties were considered in the CFD simulation in accordance with the Peng-Robinson's equation of state. According to the CFD results, the off-design performance of the two-stage turbine is comparable to that of the three-stage turbine. Moreover, compared to the three-stage turbine, the two-stage turbine generates less entropy across the shock wave. The results indicate that under both design and off-design conditions, increasing the stage loading coefficient for a fewer number of turbine stages is effective in terms of performance and size. Furthermore, the Ellipse law can be used to assess off-design performance and increasing exponent of the expansion ratio term better predicts the off-design performance with a few stages (two or three).

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