ADVANCED COOLING TECHNOLOGIES INC — Department of Energy SBIR Phase I: 37g

Description

Nuclear is a form of cheap and stable base energy, but due to the recent increase in renewable and natural gas subsidies, these plants are struggling to operate economically. Fuel, desalination and consumer products requires large amounts of thermal energy to produce their products. The reason why nuclear has not capitalized on the demand of this thermal energy is due to concerns of Tritium migration and contamination. Due to this, nuclear power plants lack the flexible plant operations to dynamically respond to modern grid markets to optimize their revenue. The proposed program will develop and investigate a variable conductance heat pipe heat exchanger (VCHP- HX) to improve nuclear plant flexibility while mitigating tritium migration to the heat exchanger secondary side. Advanced Cooling Technologies, Inc. (ACT)’s innovative heat exchanger design aim to allow nuclear plants to rapidly change between producing electrical and thermal power, while allowing the capability of passively filtering and collecting Tritium. The proposed new VCHP-HX, designed for the main steam line of a nuclear power plant, is the key innovation that will grant nuclear power plants the ability to dynamically respond to modern grid demands. Not only will the heat exchanger mitigate unwanted Tritium migration, it has the potential to act as a filter allowing the collection and selling of Tritium. The proposed heat exchanger will be designed to be installed after the high-pressure turbine, and before the main steam separator and dryer and produce process steam at about 200ºC. Process steam temperatures up to 300ºC can be achieved if installed at a different location. ACT, will perform design calculations to size and design the heat exchanger and perform Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to minimize the pressure drop over the heat exchanger. Tritium migration and collection consulting will be done by PNNL`s Dr David Senor and inhouse experiments will be done to verify the performance and migration mitigation properties of the heat exchanger. ACT will also work closely with our industrial partners to commercialize and NQA-1 qualify the technology. ACT will perform analysis to size the VCHP-HX using our in-house calculators. This will be done to calculate the components to minimize the temperature difference over the VCHP. From the sizing ANSYS Fluent will be used to perform parametric studies to determine the optimal design to minimize the pressure drop over the VCHP-HX. The effect of the heat exchanger on normal plant operations will be performed by system level modeling a nuclear power plant. A prototype heat exchanger, that can show the operation, scalability and controllability will be manufactured at ACT. The Tritium migration resistance and collection capabilities be demonstrated inhouse with support and input from PNNL The proposed technology will utilize variable conductance heat pipe technology to develop an innovative heat exchanger design. This heat exchanger will grant nuclear power plants the ability to dynamically respond to modern grid markets, while opening up the opportunity to collect and cell Tritium to state departments. This will also allow new nuclear power plants to be utilized for other applications where process heat is required, such as saltwater desalination and fuel conversion. This will not only open new markets for nuclear, but will also reduce the decency on fossil fuels, thus reducing carbon emissions.