Eventos Anais de eventos
ENCIT 2020
18th Brazilian Congress of Thermal Sciences and Engineering
CFD ANALYSIS OF THE WATER/ALUMINA NANOFLUID AS A NUCLEAR REACTOR COOLANT
Submission Author:
Luiz Carlos Aldeia Machado , RJ
Co-Authors:
Luiz Carlos Aldeia Machado, Carolina da Silva Bourdot Dutra, Gabriel Caetano Gomes Ribeiro da Silva
Presenter: Luiz Carlos Aldeia Machado
doi://10.26678/ABCM.ENCIT2020.CIT20-0515
Abstract
The arising demand for reliable and clean energy sources emphasizes the need to optimize nuclear reactors. In this context, the enhancement of the coolant heat transfer provided by nanofluids has been investigated by an increasing number of researchers. The objective of this work is the analysis of the steady-state thermal-hydraulic behavior of a water/alumina nanofluid as a coolant in square arrayed rod bundle subchannels of a PWR with pitch-to-diameter ratios of 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3 and concentrations ranging from 0 to 4.5%. The mathematical model was composed of the Reynolds–averaged Navier–Stokes equations (RANS) and the k-epsilon RNG turbulence model, solved using a commercial CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) tool, ANSYS Fluent v18.2. First, the geometric models and the meshes were created and a mesh sensitivity study was performed. Variation of mass flow rate showed the influence of the Reynolds number in the bulk temperature and the Nusselt number. After further studies, the behavior of the friction factor and the Nusselt number as functions of the Reynolds number will be analyzed to develop correlations for this system.
Keywords
CFD, Nanofluid, nuclear reactor, Thermal-hydraulic
DOWNLOAD PDF VIEW PRESENTATION
