Competitiveness of small-medium reactors: A probabilistic study on the economy of scale factor

With steady increase in energy consumption, the vulnerability of the fossil fuel supply, and environmental concerns, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has initiated the Next Generation Nuclear Power Plants (NGNP), also known as Very High Temperature Reactor (VHTR). The VHTR is planned to be operational by 2021 with possible demonstration of a hydrogen generating plant. Various engineering design studies on both the reactor plant and energy conversion system are underway. For this and related Generation IV plants, it is the goal to not only meet safety criteria but to also be efficient, economically competitive, and environmentally friendly (proliferation resistant). Traditionally, heat exchanger (HX) design is based on two main approaches: Log-Mean Temperature Difference (LMTD) and effectiveness-NTU (ε-NTU). These methods yield the dimension of the HX under anticipate condition and vice-versa. However, one is not assured that the dimension calculated give the best performing HX when economics are also considered. Here, we develop and show a specific optimization algorithm (exercise) using LMTD and simple (optimal) design theory to establish a reference case for the Printed Circuit Heat Exchanger (PCHE). Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) was further used as a design tool to investigate the optimal design of PCHE thermohydraulic flow. The CFD results were validated against the Blasius correlation before being subjected to optimal design analyses. Benchmark results for the pipe flow indicated that the predictive ability of SST k-ω is superior to the other (standard and RNG k-ε and RSM) turbulence models.The difference between CFD and the empirical expression is less than 10%.