(510a) A Multi-Phase Continuum Approach to Modeling the Performance of a Fluidized Bed Nuclear Reactor
AIChE Annual Meeting
2017
2017 Annual Meeting
Nuclear Engineering Division - See also ICE
Theory, Modeling and Simulation of Nuclear Chemical Processes
Wednesday, November 1, 2017 - 8:00am to 8:22am
Fluidized beds are currently used extensively in the petrochemical and pharmaceutical industries and there is extensive chemical engineering modeling work on the steady state and time-dependent hydrodynamics of gas- and liquid-fluidized beds with one particle species (see Jackson, 2000). However, models incorporating particle size and density distributions have been examined to a much lesser extent. This work considers a multiphase approach which makes use of volume-averaged mass and momentum balances for the fluid and particle phases independently and generalizes the monocomponent equations proposed by Anderson & Jackson (1967). The model consists of a multi-solid mixture of fluidized particles consisting of N particle species that mimics the particle size and/or density distribution of the TRISO fuel particles. The linear stability of the fluidized reactor core will be examined using hydrodynamic stability theory and a multi-fluid continuum approach to determine if and when the fluidized reactor core becomes hydrodynamically unstable. A reactor model, consisting of the proposed multi-phase continuum model along with a thermal hydraulics model and a neutron kinetics model, can be combined to investigate the dynamic stability of the reactor and the relationship between the expanded reactor core height, core neutronics, reactivity and coolant mass flowrate.