CX-020779: Liquid Metal-cooled Fast Reactor Instrumentation Technology Development – University of Wisconsin - Madison

The University of Wisconsin - Madison (UWM) proposes to further efforts to realize the Versatile Test Reactor (VTR) and support future commercialization of sodium-cooled fast reactors (SFRs) by obtaining highly resolved temperature measurements in sodium to develop more precise heat transfer models, performing testing and analysis of compact heat exchangers for use with sodium, and develop, test and calibrate an in-pool submersible flow meter. The tasks associated with this project are (1) Conduct scaled shell-and tube heat transfer measurements to obtain developing and fully-developed heat transfer data; (2) Development of a low Prandtl number mechanistic heat transfer correlation for both developing and fully-developed region; (3) Numerical model to predict heat transfer rates in a shell-and-tube configuration with low Prandtl numbers; (4) Experimental results indicating effectiveness of heat exchanger; (5) Design of a 25 kW sodium to sCO2 heat exchanger; (6) Completion of a 25 kW sodium to sCO2 heat exchanger; (7) Experimental 2D map of PCHE performance with sodium – sCO2 fluids; (8) Conjugate heat transfer model capable of performing design calculations for sodium – sCO2 PCHE; and (9) High temperature, radiation resilient, calibrated flowmeter probes for distributed SFR pool and core flow measurements.