Republic of the Philippines

BATANGAS STATE UNIVERSITY

College of Engineering, Architecture & Fine Arts
Electrical and Computer Engineering Department

Po

EEE 503 – ELECTIVE 3

Submitted by:

Mendoza, Pe-Jay N.

EE-5201

Submitted to:

Engr. Joshua S. Manoy

February 8, 2020
 P&ID drawing of heat transfer flow loop.

The loop will operate at prototypical SCWR conditions, using supercritical water at
25 MPa and test section outlet temperatures of up to 550 ºC. It will be modular in design,
such that various test section configurations can be readily accommodated. In the initial
configuration, the test section consists of an electrically heated simulation of a partial fuel
assembly with heater rods exiting through the top of the test section. Other orientations
are possible. The rods are internally grounded within the test section in the inlet plenum
volume. Flow enters the test section through the inlet plenum and exits through an outlet
plenum. The heated supercritical water then flows through a heat exchanger where it is
cooled to 280 ºC. Flow is then pumped through a pre-heater before it re-enters the test
section. The purpose of the pre-heater is to heat the water to a desired test section inlet
temperature. Loop pressure is controlled by pressurized nitrogen delivered to the
secondary side of a piston accumulator through a pressure regulator. The accumulator
also functions as a reservoir for removing and adding fluid to the loop during heat-up and
cool-down. Other major components include a quench tank where steam flow from the
system condenses, a deaeration system for removing dissolved air from the water before
experiments are conducted, a corrosion monitoring system and a water fill system.
The initial test section is designed to allow the determination of local heat transfer
coefficients for a prototypical array of electrically heated rods, simulating a section of a
nuclear fuel rod assembly operating with water flowing vertically upward at supercritical
conditions. The heated length of the rods is 1 m, or about quarter-length compared to a
prototypical reactor fuel rod. Therefore, simulation of test section thermal conditions along
the full length of a prototypic heater rod will be accomplished by varying the test section
inlet temperature from a minimum of 280ºC to a maximum of 488ºC, corresponding to the
first and fourth quarter-lengths of a prototypical fuel rod, respectively.

The test section is designed to accommodate various heater-rod configurations,

including 3-rod triangular pitch, 5-rod square pitch, and 7-rod triangular and square pitch
configurations. The apparatus will be interchangeable for these rod bundle designs.
Interchangeability will be achieved by fabricating a separate test section for each
configuration. Cross-sectional drawings of 5-rod and 7-rod configurations are shown in
Figure 7. The test section pressure vessel will be fabricated from Inconel 625, schedule-
160 piping (OD = 6.032 cm , ID = 4.290 cm). The heater rods themselves have an OD of
1.07 cm, with a reference pitch-to-diameter ratio of 1.21 to correspond with the square-
pitch design of Buongiorno and McDonald, 2003. Other pitch-to-diameter ratios may be
employed. Each heater rod will be instrumented with miniature sheathed thermocouples
(0.51 mm diameter) type K) that will provide inside-surface temperature values at eight
predetermined locations along the rods. These temperatures, in conjunction with the
deduced surface heat flux values, will allow determination of local heat transfer
coefficients at the thermocouple locations. Test section fluid inlet and outlet temperatures
will also be monitored using Inconel-sheathed type-K thermocouples. Pressure drop
across the test section will also be monitored using a differential pressure transducer. The
magnitude of the pressure drop across the test section will be of particular importance
since it represents an important design consideration that can have an impact on fuel rod
spacing, grid spacer design, etc.