Experimental Investigation of the Heat Transfer Characteristics and Operation Limits of a Fork-Type Heat Pipe for Passive Cooling of a Spent Fuel Pool

Changhwan Lim, Jonghwi Choi and Hyungdae Kim
Additional contact information
Changhwan Lim: Department of Nuclear Engineering, Kyung-Hee University, Yongin-si 17104, Gyeonggi-do, Korea
Jonghwi Choi: Department of Nuclear Engineering, Kyung-Hee University, Yongin-si 17104, Gyeonggi-do, Korea
Hyungdae Kim: Department of Nuclear Engineering, Kyung-Hee University, Yongin-si 17104, Gyeonggi-do, Korea

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 23, 1-24

Abstract: A fork-type heat pipe (FHP) is a passive heat-transport and air-cooling device used to remove the decay heat of spent nuclear fuels stored in a liquid pool during a station blackout. FHPs have a unique geometrical design to resolve the significant mismatch between the convective heat transfer coefficients of the evaporator and condenser parts. The evaporator at the bottom is a single heat-exchanger tube, whereas the condenser at the top consists of multiple finned tubes to maximize the heat transfer area. In this study, the heat transfer characteristics and operating limits of an FHP device were investigated experimentally. A laboratory-scale model of an FHP was manufactured, and a series of tests were conducted while the temperature was varied to simulate a spent fuel pool. As an index of the average heat transfer performance, the loop conductance was computed from the measurement data. The results show that the loop conductance of the FHP increased with the heat transfer rate but deteriorated significantly at the operating limit. The maximum attainable heat transfer rate of the unit FHP model was accurately predicted by the existing correlations of the counter-current flow limit for a single-rod-type heat pipe. In addition, the instant heat transfer behaviors of the FHP model under different temperature conditions were examined to interpret the measured loop conductance variation and operating limit.

Keywords: fork-type heat pipe; loop conductance; operation limit; passive air cooling; spent fuel pool (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/23/7862/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/23/7862/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:14:y:2021:i:23:p:7862-:d:686312

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().