岭澳二期反应堆控制系统数字化技术应用及其工程适应性研究

反应堆控制系统是核电厂仪控系统的重要组成部分.在岭澳二期工程中,由于采用先进的数字化技术,需要在多方面考虑有关的适应性变化.本文通过对数字化技术的应用研究,论述了反应堆控制系统在采用数字化技术之后的新要求、相应的新设计特点和适应性研究的成果.     

反应堆压力容器出口接管管嘴缺陷断裂力学分析

采用断裂力学分析方法,对大亚湾核电站反应堆压力容器出口接管管嘴上的一些缺陷进行了疲劳裂纹扩展分析和快速断裂力学分析,且依据规范对计算结果进行了评定,结果表明:此缺陷不会影响安全.     

下泄调节阀开度对下泄流影响的数值分析

对某压水堆核电站化学和容积控制系统(RCV)的下泄管路,采用Flowmaster程序作为计算平台进行了正常工况下的热工水力计算.分析了下泄调节阀RCV013VP的开度对下泄流量以及下泄管路中的一些物理参数的影响.计算结果表明,RCV013VP的阀门开度小于60%时,阀门开度对下泄流量影响显著;阀门开度大于60%时,下泄流量不再随阀门开度增加而明显变化.正常工况下即使RCV013VP全开,下泄流冷却剂也不会发生气化现象,但随着RCV013VP开度的增加,下泄管路冷却剂压力会越来越接近其对应温度下的饱和压力.     

秦山一期核电厂反应堆棒控棒位系统的数字化设计及其可靠性

秦山一期核电厂300 MW反应堆功率棒控棒位系统为模拟仪表控制系统,由于设备老化、维护困难和可靠性下降等原因需要改造.系统改造采用基于CPU冗余、电源冗余和ControlNet现场总线冗余的控制方案.利用PLC控制技术,对其棒控棒位模拟仪表控制系统进行数字化改造设计,克服了系统参数不能实时调整、抗干扰能力差等缺陷,增强了系统的通信能力、集中监控能力及系统可维护性,提高了系统的可靠性和安全性.模块化的程序设计,增强了程序的可读性和实用性,减少了程序扫描时间,保证了系统响应速度.实际反应堆的运行效果验证了设计的合理性.     

The result of a wall failure in-pile experiment under the EAGLE project

The WF (wall failure) test of the EAGLE program, in which 2 kg of uranium dioxide fuel-pins were melted by nuclear heating, was successfully conducted in the IGR (Impulse Graphite Reactor) of NNC/Kazakhstan. In this test, a 3 mm-thick stainless steel (SS) wall structure was placed between fuel pins and a 10 mm-thick sodium-filled channel (sodium gap). During the transient, fuel pins were heated, which led to the formation of a fuel-steel mixture pool. Under the transient nuclear heating condition, the SS wall was strongly heated by the molten pool, leading to wall failure. The time needed for fuel penetration into the sodium-filled gap was very short (less than 1 s after the pool formation). The result suggests that molten core materials formed in hypothetical LMFBR core disruptive accidents have a certain potential to destroy SS-wall boundaries early in the accident phase, thereby providing fuel escape paths from the core region. The early establishment of such fuel escape paths is regarded as a favorable characteristic in eliminating the possibility of severe re-criticality events. A preliminary interpretation on the WF test results is presented in this paper.     

微型反应堆卸料装置设计及可靠性分析

微型反应堆（简称“微堆”）低浓化及退役都包含乏燃料卸出的操作,而保证乏燃料安全卸出的关键设备之一就是卸料装置。现有的卸料装置在操作过程中会破坏微堆堆筒体密封性,并且无法恢复,但微堆低浓化后还需利用原有堆筒体进行装料运行,所以本文在此需求的基础上设计了一套新型的卸料装置,可在不分离筒节、不破坏筒体完整性及密封性的前提下完成卸料操作。新设计的卸料装置包含卸料操作工具和辅助机械装置两部分。卸料操作工具通过小盖开口即可实现燃料组件的抓取,实施吊装。卸出的微堆乏燃料具有很高的放射性,卸料操作工具配合辅助机械装置,可实现远距离起升平移的操作,这种设计便于屏蔽,同时可有效降低工作人员所受辐射剂量。对该卸料装置进行计算和可靠性分析,结果表明其强度远大于实际使用载荷,安全可靠,能较好地满足微堆使用需求。新型微堆卸料装置具有经济性好、易制备、易操作的特点,下一步将在国内外微堆低浓化卸料或退役中推广应用。     

Iron oxide-based honeycomb catalysts for the dehydrogenation of ethylbenzene to styrene

Corning has recently developed a novel extrusion method to make bulk transition metal oxide honeycomb catalysts. One area of effort has been iron oxide-based catalysts for the dehydrogenation of ethylbenzene to styrene, a major chemical process that yields worldwide 20 MM tons/yr. In industry, the monomer is synthesized mostly in radial-flow fixed-bed reactors. Because of the high cross-sectional area for flow and shallow depth of the catalyst bed in these reactors, low reactor pressure gradients are maintained that favors the yield and selectivity for styrene formation. However, the radial-flow design has inherent detractions, including inefficient use of reactor volume and large temperature gradients that decrease catalyst service life. The overall economics of the process can be improved with parallel-channel honeycomb catalysts and axial flow reactors. The simple axial flow design of honeycomb catalysts provides low-pressure drop, while making more efficient use of reactor volume, with better heat and mass transfer characteristics compared to a conventional radial packed bed. An important part of this concept is the ability to fabricate a wide family of dehydrogenation catalyst compositions into honeycombs with the requisite chemical, physical, mechanical, and catalytic properties for industrial use. The ethylbenzene dehydrogenation (EBD) honeycomb catalysts developed by Corning have compositions similar to those commonly used in industry and are prepared with the same catalyst and promoter precursors and with similar treatments.

However, to enable extrusion of catalyst precursors into honeycomb shapes, especially at cell densities above 100 cell/in.², Corning’s process compensates for the high salt concentrations and the high pH of the batch material that would otherwise prevent or impede honeycomb extrusion. The improved rheological characteristics provide the necessary plasticity, lubricity, and resiliency for honeycomb extrusion with sufficient binder strength needed before calcination to the final product. Iron oxide-based honeycombs after calcination are strong and possess macroporosity and high surface area. In bench-scale testing, particular honeycomb catalyst compositions exhibited 60–76% ethylbenzene conversion with styrene selectivity of 95–91%, respectively, under conventional reaction conditions without apparent deactivation or loss of mechanical integrity.     

Petri-net based modelling approach for ALFRED reactor operation and control system design

In this work, the Petri-net modelling approach applied to the control system design of the Advanced Lead Fast Reactor European Demonstrator (ALFRED) is presented, paying particular attention to the startup procedure. The reactor startup is the operational transient in which all the systems of the plant are brought from the cold shutdown condition to the full power mode, close to load-frequency control. In this phase, the several control actions to be taken need to be properly coordinated. To this end, the operational sequence which constitutes the reactor startup procedure has been described by adopting the Petri-nets approach, i.e., a useful formalism for the modelling and the analysis of Discrete Event Systems. Thanks to this quantitative representation, it is possible to easily derive the corresponding control scheme. In addition, the Petri-nets approach has been also exploited for the two-level control system architecture, namely a master system coordinates the operation of the plant by sending suitable signals to the slave system, in which feedback controllers are implemented. As a major outcome of this work, the procedure for the reactor startup and the transition to the full power mode has been simulated in order to assess the control system performance.     

IDEAS based synthesis of minimum volume reactor networks featuring residence time density/distribution models

This work addresses for the first time, the synthesis of globally minimum volume reactor networks, featuring segregated flow reactors (SFR) and/or maximum mixedness reactors (MMR), with the same normalized residence time density (NRTd) function. Global optimality is ascertained by demonstrating that the input–output information maps of SFR and MMR with general RTd/RTD models satisfy all properties required for the application of the infinite dimensional state-space (IDEAS) approach to the RTd/RTD reactor network synthesis problem. The resulting IDEAS formulation is shown to possess a number of novel properties, which can be used to facilitate its solution. The power of the proposed methodology is demonstrated on three case studies featuring segregated laminar flow reactors (SLFR) in which the Trambouze reaction scheme is carried out. In one of the case studies, the identified reactor network is shown to have volume that is as low as half the volume of a single reactor.     

Ion transport membrane reactors for oxy-combustion - Part I: intermediate-fidelity modeling

Oxy-fuel combustion, particularly using an integrated oxygen ion transport membrane (ITM), is a thermodynamically attractive concept that seeks to mitigate the penalties associated with CO₂ capture from power plants. Oxygen separation in an ITM system consists of many distinct physical processes, ranging from complex electrochemical and thermo-chemical reactions, to conventional heat and mass transfer. The dependence of ITM performance on power cycle operating conditions and system integration schemes must be captured in order to conduct meaningful process flow and optimization studies where multiple degrees of freedom are considered. An axially spatially-distributed, quasi two-dimensional model is developed based on fundamental conservation equations, semi-empirical oxygen transport equations obtained from the literature, and simplified fuel oxidation kinetic mechanisms. Aspects of reactor engineering such as geometric structure, flow configuration and the relationship between oxygen transport, fuel conversion and pressure drop are explored. Emphasis is placed on model robustness, modularity, and low computational expense in order to evaluate the myriad of ITM possibilities within a power cycle simulation quickly and accurately. Overall, the model seeks to bridge the gap between detailed CFD studies and overly-simplified black-box models found in ITM-power cycle analyses, and provides a tool for the analysis and design of ITM systems.