LUNA INNOVATIONS INCORPORATED — Department of Energy SBIR Phase I: 33a

Description

Continued use of nuclear power is critical to meeting carbon emission goals and ensuring national security. Nuclear power production will rely on both current generation (LWR and PWR) as well as next generation designs including the very-high-temperature reactor, lead-cooled fast reactor, molten-salt reactor, supercritical-water-cooled reactor, and sodium-cooled fast reactor. The development and deployment of these high temperature and harsh environment reactors will require advanced sensors capable of operating in these environments. Luna’s core technology lies in Optical Frequency Domain Reflectometry (OFDR) utilizing the Rayleigh backscatter and Fiber Bragg Gratings within optical fiber to make temperature measurements. Recently Dr. Thomas Blue’s research group at The Ohio State University developed a method for producing single mode sapphire fiber and Dr. Kevin Chen’s group at The University of Pittsburgh has developed methods for writing “Enhanced Rayleigh Scatter Points” in optical fiber. The combination of these technologies shows great promise for producing high density fiber optic sensors that can operate at temperatures in excess of 1500°C in high radiation environments. The sensors developed in this program will ultimately be packaged into a deployable unit that can be installed into test, research, and commercial reactor facilities. This technology will provide for methods of measuring temperature, strain, and pressure in high radiation environments with temperatures in excess of 1500°C. During the Phase I effort, Luna will investigate the feasibility of the approach through fabrication design and modeling of the newly developed single mode sapphire fiber (SMSF) production method, fabrication of various sensor technologies using the new SMSF, experimental validation to demonstrate the sensor’s ability to measure temperatures in excess of 1300°C, and finally operation in a research reactor for a duration that provides a total fluence on the order of 5 × 1017 n/cm2.High temperature (1300°C+) SMSF utilizing Distributed High Definition Fiber Optic Sensing (HD-FOS) will enable safe operation of high temperature Gen-IV reactor designs, and provide many measurement points along a single fiber, reducing the number of required reactor vessel penetrations. Since the radiation tolerant developed sensors will also be high-temperature capable, they will also find application in rocket engine monitoring, rocket engine development, gas and coal power plants, solar salt power plants, and in gas turbine health monitoring.