Performance Simulation to Understand the Effects of Multifluid Scaling of Gas Turbine Components for Generation IV Nuclear Power Plants

Abstract

A significant hurdle in the development of performance simulation tools to analyze and evaluate nuclear power plants (NPP) is finding data relating to component performance maps. As a result, engineers often rely on an estimation approach using various scaling techniques. The purpose of this study is to determine the component characteristics of a closed-cycle gas turbine NPP using the existing component maps with the corresponding design data. The design data are applied for different working fluids using a multifluid scaling approach to adapt data from one component map into another. The multifluid scaling technique described herein was developed as an in-house computer simulation tool. This approach makes it easy to theoretically scale the existing maps using similar or different working fluids without carrying out a full experimental test or repeating the whole design and development process. The results of selected case studies show a reasonable agreement with the available data. The analyses intend to aid the development of cycles for Generation IV NPPs specifically gas-cooled fast reactors (GFRs) and very high-temperature reactors (VHTRs).