Session: 04-07: SMRs, Advanced Reactors and Fusion

Paper Number: 136516

136516 - Optimal Design of a Coupling System of Heat Pipe Cooled Reactor With Energy Storage System 

Abstract: 

In the quest to reduce carbon emissions, nuclear energy has emerged as a vital alternative for the near-zero-carbon-emission energy provider, offering the potential to make a significant impact. Micro nuclear reactors have been seen as one of the potential nuclear energy solutions to the carbon emission reduction due to its compact design, flexibility and economic merits. Heat-pipe-cooled nuclear reactors (HPR) can achieve attention due to its avoidance of single-point failure, passive core heat removal capability, and modularity. Different concept designs of HPRs have been proposed, including the Evince by Westinghouse, NUSTER by Xi’an Jiaotong University and HOMBER by New Mexico University for the application in the island, underwater and space environment. If applied in the remote grid communities or the mining operations, the HPRs will face the challenges of high variability in energy demand and reactor relatively long response time. The HPRs are usually preferred to be working as the base-load energy supplier. The large thermal inertia of the reactor core and heat pipe cooling systems make it challenge for the HPR system to work in the load-following operation mode. The battery system, as the storage and energy provider system, can respond to the energy demand in a much quicker speed. The combination of the two types system can enable the possibility to satisfy the time-varying energy demand in a quicker and safer operation mode. Thus this paper presents a conceptual design for a hybrid energy system that combines HPRs with a battery-based energy storage system. Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm, and Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Programming (MINLP) are used to achieve optimal system configuration and to assess the effectiveness and performability of HPR-battery hybrid energy system. The system models are setup for the reactor-based hybrid system on the SIMULINK platform, which include the core, heat pipe, Brayton energy conversion system and the battery system. The point kinetics model and lumped heat transfer model are adopted to simulate the reactor core physics and heat transfer. The heat pipe transient thermal process is simulated by the thermal resistance network model. Based on model predictive control algorithms, evaluation is performed on the HPR-based hybrid system to examine its responsiveness to time-varying energy demands. The reactor thermal-hydraulic parameters and the battery performance parameters are explored in the influencing the overall performance of the hybrid system. It is found that the proposed HPR-battery hybrid system shows better loading following capability while the fuel economic and safety performance are improved.

Presenting Author: Limin Liu Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Presenting Author Biography: Dr.Limin Liu is a research associate in Shanghai Jiao Tong University, who is working in the micro nuclear reactors, including the heat pipe cooled reactors and molten salt reactors. He is now focusing on the optimized design of hybrid energy system based on the micro reactors and battery energy storage system, and doing reasearch in the energy management algorithm。

Authors:

Limin Liu Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Ziyin Liu Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Ziang Guo Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Hanyang Gu Shanghai Jiao Tong University