Investigation on dust captured by quintuple filters installed upstream of primary gas circulators in HTTR

Inaba, Yoshitomo  ; Hamamoto, Shimpei  ; Furusawa, Takayuki ; Saikusa, Akio ; Sakaba, Nariaki 

A main objective to install filters upstream of primary gas circulators in the high temperature engineering test reactor (HTTR), besides having a primary helium purification system, is the reduction and removal of circulating dust in the primary circuit. A problem encountered with the filters during the initial operations of the HTTR was that the differential pressure across the filters had increased excessively over the duration of the operations so that the differential pressure would be expected to exceed the limit value regulated in the HTTR operation manual. It was speculated that either the carbon traced back chemical reactions, the debris from mechanical contacts or both of these sources might be captured by the filters. Then, the filters were replaced and inspected to identify the cause of the increase of the filter differential pressure. As a result, it was found that the increase is caused by clogging of the filters by the dust traced back to the physical contact of the piston rings of the gas circulators equipped in the primary helium purification system. Hence, prismatic block-type very high temperature reactors (VHTRs) do not continuously supply carbon dust from the cores in operation.