Modeling and control simulation of the China CLEAR-IB

Abstract To investigate the dynamic and control characteristics of the plant, a model for the main components of the reactor and the most relevant interactions among them is developed. The system comprises of the primary system with lead bismuth eutectic (LBE) as the coolant, the secondary circuit with steam water mixture as the coolant and the associated air cooling system for an effective rejection of thermal power to the environment as a final heat sink. A Proportional-Integral (PI) controller is designed to keep the power following the set value as quickly as possible. To keep outlet coolant of air coolers and inlet coolant of HXs being saturated water, a control strategy based on a simultaneous feed-forward and feedback scheme has been adopted. Based on the developed model and control strategy, dynamic simulation of the whole system in the cases of step changes of external source and load is performed. The simulation results show that the proposed model is accurate enough to describe the dynamic behaviors of the plant in spite of its simplicity. It has also been demonstrated that the developed controllers for the CLEAR-IB can provide superior reactor control capabilities due to the efficiency of the control strategy adopted.

[1]  Michael F. McGuire,et al.  Stainless Steels for Design Engineers , 2008 .

[2]  Marco Enrico Ricotti,et al.  Transfer function modelling of the Lead-cooled Fast Reactor (LFR) dynamics , 2010 .

[3]  K. M. Lee,et al.  Study on models for gap conductance between fuel and sheath for CANDU reactors , 1995 .

[4]  Piero Ravetto,et al.  A Simple Model to Evaluate the Natural Convection Impact on the Core Transients in Liquid Metal Cooled ADS , 2000 .

[5]  Marco Enrico Ricotti,et al.  Modelling and control strategy of the Italian LBE-XADS , 2006 .

[6]  Karl Johan Åström,et al.  PID Controllers: Theory, Design, and Tuning , 1995 .

[7]  Brian Roffel,et al.  Process Dynamics and Control: Modeling for Control and Prediction , 2007 .

[8]  Piyush Sabharwall,et al.  Natural Circulation and Linear Stability Analysis for Liquid-Metal Reactors with the Effect of Fluid Axial Conduction , 2012 .

[9]  Konstantin Mikityuk,et al.  Heat transfer to liquid metal: Review of data and correlations for tube bundles , 2009 .

[10]  James J. Sienicki,et al.  Stability Analysis on Single-Phase Natural Circulation in Argonne Lead Loop Facility , 2003 .

[11]  J. Lewins.  Nuclear reactor kinetics and control , 1978 .

[12]  R. Hyland,et al.  Formulations for the thermodynamic properties of dry air from 173.15 K to 473.15 K, and of saturated moist air from 173.15 K to 372.15 K, at pressures to 5 MPa , 1983 .

[13]  Tilmann Abbe Horst,et al.  Dynamic heat exchanger model for performance prediction and control system design of automotive waste heat recovery systems , 2013 .

[14]  Gábor Szederkényi,et al.  A simple dynamic model of the primary circuit in VVER plants for controller design purposes , 2007 .