Modeling and simulation of feedwater control system with multiple once-through steam generators in a sodium-cooled fast reactor (II): Control system simulation

Abstract The sodium-heated steam generator plays a crucial role in the operation and safety of sodium-cooled fast reactor. The configuration with multiple steam generators poses challenges to the feedwater control system design. It is necessary to adopt an appropriate control strategy. Based on the dynamic analysis, hybrid feedback and feedforward control theory is applied in the loop feedwater control. The feedback control consists of a temperature controller and a feedwater flow controller. The feedforward controller is applied to reduce the effects on the sodium temperature from the sodium flow. To eliminate the unbalance among different branches, branch temperature controller is applied. The controller parameters are tuned using trial and error method. The control performance is evaluated through simulation under symmetrical and unsymmetrical conditions. The simulation results are analyzed. It can be found the changes in the setpoint can be quickly traced and disturbances are rejected efficiently with the designed control system.