Friction factor and Reynolds number correlation for finned tube bundle of the air cooler of Monju reactor

Sotsu, Masutake 

Applicability of the analysis model of the cooling ability under a high temperature and low flowrate condition should be improved to evaluate the plant safety in case of the severe accident due to long-term station blackout. The present study reviews experiments on pressure drop behavior for complicated tube bundle geometry to the flow path and then develops a new correlation equation based on a computational fluid dynamics analysis of the Monju air cooler reflecting the actual geometry and plant data. After a basic simulation model being developed for a typical pressure drop experiment, the simulation is applied to the Monju air cooler that has a finned tube bundle. The obtained relationship between friction factors and Reynolds numbers ranging from 10 to 10,000 are fitted to a power function to derive a correlation equation of the fin tube bundle friction factor. The derived correlation equation can estimate pressure loss in the finned tube bundle more precisely than that in the Monju design. It is applicable to the future reactor design of the air cooler, especially when the cooling ability in low Reynolds number is requested.