Critical heat flux analysis and R&D for the design of the ITER divertor

An extended review of the application of twisted-tape inserts in tubular heat exchangers and their thermal-hydraulic performance is presented. Twisted tapes promote enhanced heat transfer by generating swirl or secondary flows, increasing the flow velocity due to the tube partitioning and blockage, and providing an effectively longer helical flow length. Depending on the tape-edge to tube-wall contact, some fin effects may also be present. Their usage in both single-phase and two-phase (boiling and condensation) flows is considered, and heat transfer and pressure drop results from different investigations are presented. The characteristic features of swirl-induced heat transfer enhancement, nature of swirl flows and their scaling, and development of predictive correlations for heat transfer coefficients and friction factors (or pressure drop) are discussed. Also, some aspects of the use of geometrically modified twisted-tape inserts, as well as compound application with other enhancement techniques, are briefly discussed.

Swirl flow heat transfer and pressure drop with twisted-tape inserts

High heat flux testing of mock-ups for a full tungsten ITER divertor

The ITER divertor vertical target has to sustain heat fluxes up to 20 MW m−2. The concept developed for this plasma facing component working at steady state is based on carbon fibre composite armour for the lower straight part and tungsten for the curved upper part. The main challenges involved in the use of such components include the removal of the high heat fluxes deposited and mechanically and thermally joining the armour to the metallic heat sink, despite the mismatch in the thermal expansions. Two solutions based on the use of a CuCrZr hardened copper alloy and an active metal casting (AMC®) process were investigated during the ITER EDA phase: the first one called 'flat tile geometry' was mainly developed for the Tore Supra pumped limiter, the second one called 'monoblock geometry' was developed by the EU Participating Team for the ITER project. This paper presents a review of these two solutions and analyses their assets and drawbacks: pressure drop, critical heat flux, surface temperature and expected behaviour during operation, risks during the manufacture, control of the armour defects during the manufacture and at the reception, and the possibility of repairing defective tiles.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0029-5515/45/6/013/pdf

J. Schlosser

Papers

Critical heat flux of water subcooled flow in one-side heated swirl tubes