0000000000329590

AUTHOR

Quartararo A.

A Numerical Approach to Study Shell-Side Fluid Flow in Shell-and-Tube Heat Exchangers

Abstract The detailed CFD simulation of the shell-side flow inside shell-and-tube heat exchangers results prohibitive for large-size components, due to the large number of tubes, together with the multi-scale nature of the flow features. To overcome this issue, the porous media approach can be adopted, substituting the tube bundle with a porous domain, where a suitable momentum sink term in the Navier-Stokes equation is provided. In this paper, a novel numerical approach to estimate the crossflow shell-side pressure drop is presented: a complete characterization of the tube bundle was performed by running 2D-CFD steady-state isothermal analyses, collecting pressure gradient magnitudes and d…

research product

Divertor of the European DEMO: Engineering and technologies for power exhaust

International audience; In a power plant scale fusion reactor, a huge amount of thermal power produced by the fusion reaction and external heating must be exhausted through the narrow area of the divertor targets. The targets must withstand the intense bombardment of the diverted particles where high heat fluxes are generated and erosion takes place on the surface. A considerable amount of volumetric nuclear heating power must also be exhausted. To cope with such an unprecedented power exhaust challenge, a highly efficient cooling capacity is required. Furthermore, the divertor must fulfill other critical functions such as nuclear shielding and channeling (and compression) of exhaust gas fo…

research product

On the modelling of tritium transport phenomena at fluid-structure interfaces

Abstract One of the main functions of the DEMO Breeding Blanket (BB) system is to ensure the tritium breeding inside the reactor. Tritium is a beta emitter radioactive isotope, subjected to several processes that determine its permeation across materials and its leakage towards the environment, posing potential safety issues in terms of radiological hazard. Thus, the evaluation of tritium inventories inside components and tritium losses towards the environment plays a key role in the fulfilment of the pertinent BB safety requirements. In this regard, a research activity has been carried out, in close cooperation between the University of Palermo and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, fo…

research product