Numerical Study of Liquid Metal Turbulent Heat Transfer in Cross-Flow Tube Banks

Alessandro Tassone (), Jasper Meeusen, Andrea Serafini and Gianfranco Caruso
Additional contact information
Alessandro Tassone: Department of Astronautical, Electrical and Energy Engineering—DIAEE, Nuclear Engineering Research Group, Sapienza University of Rome, Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, 244, 00186 Roma, Italy
Jasper Meeusen: Department of Mechanical Engineering (TME), KU Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 300A–postbus 2421, B-3001 Heverlee, Belgium
Andrea Serafini: Department of Astronautical, Electrical and Energy Engineering—DIAEE, Nuclear Engineering Research Group, Sapienza University of Rome, Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, 244, 00186 Roma, Italy
Gianfranco Caruso: Department of Astronautical, Electrical and Energy Engineering—DIAEE, Nuclear Engineering Research Group, Sapienza University of Rome, Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, 244, 00186 Roma, Italy

Energies, 2022, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-19

Abstract: Heavy liquid metals (HLM) are attractive coolants for nuclear fission and fusion applications due to their excellent thermal properties. In these reactors, a high coolant flow rate must be processed in compact heat exchangers, and as such, it may be convenient to have the HLM flowing on the shell side of a helical coil steam generator. Technical knowledge about HLM turbulent heat transfer in cross-flow tube bundles is rather limited, and this paper aims to investigate the suitability of Reynolds Average Navier–Stokes (RANS) models for the simulation of this problem. Staggered and in-line finite tube bundles are considered for compact ( a = 1.25 ), medium ( a = 1.45 ), and wide ( a = 1.65 ) pitch ratios. The lead bismuth eutectic alloy with Pr = 2.21 × 10 − 2 is considered as the working fluid. A 2D computational domain is used relying on the k − ω Shear Stress Transport (SST) for the turbulent momentum flux and the Pr t concept for the turbulent heat flux prediction. The effect of uniform and spatially varying Pr t assumptions has been investigated. For the in-line bundle, unsteady k − ω SST/ Pr t = 0.85 has been found to significantly underpredict the integral heat transfer with regard to theory, featuring a good to acceptable agreement for wide bundles and Pe ≥ 1150 . For the staggered tube bank, steady k − ω SST and a spatially varying Pr t has been the best modeling strategy featuring a good to excellent agreement for medium and wide bundles. A poor agreement for compact bundles has been observed for all the models considered.

Keywords: heat transfer; turbulent Prandtl number; liquid metal; cross-flow; tube bank (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: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/16/1/387/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/16/1/387/ (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:16:y:2022:i:1:p:387-:d:1018938

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 ().