Performance Assessment of Sodium to Air Finned Heat Exchanger for FBR

In pool type Fast Breeder Reactors (FBR) a passive Safety Grade Decay Heat Removal (SGDHR) system removes decay heat produced in the core when normal heat removal path through steam water system is not available. This is essential to maintain the core temperatures within limits. A Decay Heat Exchanger (DHX) picks the heat from the pool and transfers the heat to atmosphere through sodium to Air Heat Exchanger (AHX) situated at high elevation. Due to the temperature differences existent in the system density differences are generated causing a buoyant convective heat transfer. The system is completely passive as primary sodium, secondary sodium and air flows under natural convection. DHX is a sodium to sodium counter flow heat exchanger with primary sodium on shell side and secondary sodium on tube side. AHX is a cross flow heat exchanger with sodium on tube side and air flows in cross flow across the finned tubes. Capacity of a single loop of SGDHR is 8MW. Four such loops are available for the decay heat removal. It has been seen that the decay heat removal to a large extent depends on the AHX performance. AHX tested have shown reduced heat removal capacity much as 30 to 40%, essentially due to the bypassing of the finned tubes by the air. It was felt that a geometrically similar AHX be tested in sodium. Towards this a 2MW Sodium to air heat exchanger (AHX) was tested in the Steam Generator Test Facility (SGTF) constructed at Indira Gandhi Center for Atomic Research (IGCAR), Kalpakkam. The casing arrangement of the AHX was designed to minimise bypassing of air.