Feasibility analysis of two-phase MHD energy conversion for liquid metal cooled reactors

A two-phase MHD energy conversion unit is proposed to a liquid metal cooled fast reactor. Using supercritical CO2 as the working fluid in the gas cycle without considering friction and heat losses, the optimized cycles efficiency is obtained, which is about 5% higher than that of the gas turbine Brayton cycle with the same regenerator/compressor configurations. Based on a simple MHD power analysis and the two-phase homogeneous flow model, the important system operational conditions were estimated. The results suggest that a liquid lead pump of at least 20% of the MHD power output is needed in order to convert the 400 MW reactor heat into electricity at the specified thermal efficiency, unless a mixture foam flow of void fraction greater than 80% is achievable at very high mixture velocity.