Numerical study on pressure drop and heat transfer for designing sodium-to-air heat exchanger tube banks on advanced sodium-cooled fast reactor

A numerical study is performed to investigate the thermal and hydraulic characteristics and build up design model of the AHX (sodium-to-air heat exchanger) unit of a sodium-cooled fast reactor. Helical-coiled tube banks in the AHX are modeled as porous media and simulated heat and momentum transfer by a commercial program. Two-dimensional flow characteristic appears differently at the inlet region of the AHX annulus, and the required length of the inlet region is shorter for an inlet having a 45 degree chamber or a round shape than for one with a perpendicular corner. Pressure drop and heat transfer coefficient for rectangular, parallelogram and staggered tube banks as the main components of the AHX are evaluated and discussed. Pressure drop and heat transfer shows similar trends and underestimated values, respectively, when compared with Zhukauskas empirical correlations. The parallelogram tube bank shows similar results to the rectangular arrangement.

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► Numerical simulation for the heat flow characteristic of the sodium-to-air heat exchanger (AHX) and tube banks.
► Parallelogram tube banks showed almost similar thermal and hydraulic characteristics to the rectangular tube banks.
► Pressure drop and heat transfer of the staggered and rectangular tube banks compared with Zhukauskas’ correlation.
► AHX was modeled as porous media and suggested design guide to enhance the performance.