Heat Transfer Potential of Unidirectional Porous Tubes for Gas Cooling under High Heat Flux Conditions

Abstract

To discuss a suitable porous structure for helium gas cooling under high heat flux conditions of a nuclear fusion divertor, we first evaluate effective thermal conductivity of sintered copper-particles in a simple cubic lattice by direct numerical heat-conduction simulation. The simulation reveals that the effective thermal conductivity of the sintered copper-particle highly depends on the contacting state of each particle, which leads to the difficulty for the thermal design. To cope with this difficulty, we newly propose utilization of a unidirectional porous tube formed by explosive compression technology. Quantitative prediction of its cooling potential using the heat transfer correlation equation demonstrates that the heat transfer coefficient of the helium gas cooling at the pressure of 10 MPa exceeds 30,000 W/m2/K at the inlet flow velocity of 25 m/s, which verifies that the unidirectional porous copper tubes can be a candidate for the gas-cooled divertor concept.

Keywords

• unidirectional porous tube
• gas cooling
• high heat flux condition
• fusion reactor
• divertor
• effective thermal conductivity