Development of a High-Temperature Heat Pipe Simulation Code Using Conjugate Heat-Mass Transfer and High-Speed Compressible Algorithm

Abstract Due to the excellent passive heat transfer characteristics, the Heat Pipe cooled Reactor (HPR) has been widely studied as an important type of micro-reactor. Heat pipe simulation is an unique and important part of the HPRs multi-physics simulation, which can directly determine the temperature of the core boundaries and whether the fission heat can be transported to energy convert unit or dissipated. Heat pipe simulation involves a coupled heat and mass transfer process of multiple physical fields, which posing great challenges. In this work, a two-dimensional high-temperature alkali metal heat pipe simulation code KMC-HPs is developed based on Finite Volume Method (FVM). The heat conduction model is used to characterize the heat pipe wall and porous wick, and a two-dimensional compressible laminar flow model is used to characterize the vapor channel. The laminar flow model is verified with simulation result of commercial code, which indicates the ability of high-speed compressible flow simulation of KMC-HPs. Both steady and transient heat pipe simulations were performed for code validation, and the simulation results were compared with experiment or existing simulation work, which proved the rightness of physical model and numerical algorithm of KMC-HPs, and its ability to simulate heat pipe with high precision.