Abstract
With an increasing number of nuclear reactors in China, the accumulation of spent nuclear fuel exponentially rises. Unavoidably, high level radioactive waste has been generated from the fuel’s reprocessing. Thus, cold crucible induction melting technology is under active development in several countries. In this study, temperature field and induction heat distribution were numerically investigated for design and operating condition optimization. Then, the calculated power of the coil was validated in the experiment. After that, comparisons among electromagnetic and temperature fields with different power and frequencies were conducted. In addition, the effects of stirring on the flow fields were evaluated for further understanding of the interactions among flow field, glass properties, temperature and electromagnetic fields. The numerical simulation precisely predicts the temperature distribution and electrical power distribution in the coil. Comparisons between calculated power densities of 650 mm and 800 mm cold crucible induction melters indicate that induction power of 800 cold crucible induction melter (CCIM) with 400 mm high molten glass requires at least 247 kW. Additionally, the simulation stirring results indicate that stirring significantly improves the hydrodynamic homogenization. At last, calculation results in this study exhibit their application potential for informing designs of the melter’s temperature distribution and stirring effects.
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© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
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Hong, Y., Li, Y., Zhu, D., Qie, D., Wang, R., Zhang, S. (2023). Multi-physics Numerical Investigation on the Mechanical Stirring in a Cold Crucible Melter. In: Liu, C. (eds) Proceedings of the 23rd Pacific Basin Nuclear Conference, Volume 2. Springer Proceedings in Physics, vol 284. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8780-9_84
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8780-9_84
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