• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.77-83
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• 2014

The vessel of integral reactor contains its major primary components such as the fuel and core, pumps, steam generators, and a pressurizer, so its size is proportional to the required space for the installation of each component. The steam generators take up the largest volume of internal space of reactor vessel and their volumes is substantial for the overall size of reactor vessel. Reduction of installation space for steam generators can lead to much smaller reactor vessel with resultant decrease of overall cost for the components and related facilities. A printed circuit heat exchanger is one of the compact types of heat exchangers available as an alternative to conventional shell and tube heat exchangers. Its name is derived from the procedure used to manufacture the flat metal plates that form the core of the heat exchanger, which is done by chemical milling. These plates are then stacked and diffusion bonded, converting the plates into a solid metal block containing precisely engineered fluid flow passages. The overall heat transfer area and pressure drops are evaluated for the steam generator based on the concept of the printed circuit heat exchanger in this study. As the printed circuit heat exchanger is known to have much larger heat transfer area density per unit volume, we can expect significantly reduced steam generator compared to former shell and tube type of steam generator. For the introduction of new steam generator, two design requirements are considered: flow area ratio between primary and secondary flow paths, and secondary side parallel channel flow oscillation. The results show that the overall volume of the steam generator can be significantly reduced with printed circuit type of steam generator.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.1
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• pp.257-264
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• 2024

The sodium cooled fast reactor (SFR) is one of the Gen-IV reactors with the most operating experience accumulated. Although the technology level is the most mature among the Gen-IV reactors, there is still a safety problem that has not been solved, which is the sodium-water reaction. Since sodium and water are separated only by a heat transfer tube with a thickness of only a few mm, there is inherently a risk of a sodium-water reaction (SWR) accident in the SFR. In this study, it is attempted to quantitatively evaluate the resistance of SWR accidents by replacing the shell and tube steam generator with printed circuit steam generator (PCSG) as a method to mitigate the SWR accident. To do this, a CATS-S (Compact Accident Tolerance Steam Generator-SWR) facility was designed and built. And for the quantitative evaluation of accident resistance, a methodology for measuring the impingement wastage rate was established. As a result of this research, the impingement wastage rate caused by SWR generated in a PCSG was measured first time. It was confirmed that the impingement wastage phenomenon was suppressed in the PCSG, and the accident resistance was higher than that of the SWR through comparison with the experimental results performed in the existing shell and tube steam generator. In conclusion, a PCSG is more resistant to impingement wastage as a result of the SWR accident than existing shell and tube steam generators, and it is estimated that a PCSG can mitigate SWR accidents, an inherent problem of SFR.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.3
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• pp.1085-1097
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• 2022

A printed circuit steam generator (PCSG) is being considered as the component for pressurized water reactor (PWR) type small modular reactor (SMR) that can further reduce the physical size of the system. Since a steam generator in many PWR-type SMR generates superheated steam, it is expected that dryout front oscillation can potentially cause thermal fatigue failure due to cyclic thermal stresses induced by the transition in boiling regimes between convective evaporation and film boiling. To investigate the fatigue issue of a PCSG, a reference PCSG is designed in this study first using an in-house PCSG design tool. For the stress analysis, a finite element method analysis model is developed to obtain the temperature and stress fields of the designed PCSG. Fatigue estimation is performed based on ASME Boiler and pressure vessel code to identify the major parameters influencing the fatigue life time originating from the dryout front oscillation. As a result of this study, the limit on the temperature difference between the hot side and cold side fluids is obtained. Moreover, it is found that the heat transfer coefficient of convective evaporation and film boiling regimes play an essential role in the fatigue life cycle as well as the temperature difference.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.4
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• pp.1365-1381
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• 2023

In this paper, a procedure for evaluating the structural integrity of the PCSG (Printed Circuit Steam Generator) unit block is presented with a simplified FE (finite element) analysis technique by applying the homogenization method. The homogenization method converts an inhomogeneous elastic body into a homogeneous elastic body with same mechanical behaviour. This method is effective when the inhomogeneous elastic body has repetitive microstructures, and thus the method was applied to the sheet assembly among the PCSG unit block components. From the method, the homogenized equivalent elastic constants of the sheet assembly were derived. The validity of the determined material properties was verified by comparing the mechanical behaviour with the reference model. Thermo-mechanical analysis was then performed to evaluate the structural integrity of the PCSG unit block, and it was found that the contact region between the steam header and the sheet assembly is a critical point where large bending stress occurs due to the temperature difference.