Title:

Investigations of Heat Transfer Enhancements for Molten Salt Reactor Components and Fusion Device First Wall Heat Removal

Speaker:

Dr. Lane Carasik

Affiliation:

Professor, Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering at Virginia Commonwealth University

When:

Thursday, February 24, 2022 at 11:00:00 AM   Add to Calendar

Where:

Boggs Building, Room 3-47

Host:

Dan Kotlyar
dbrown360@gatech.edu

Abstract

Advanced energy systems including nuclear power plants use heat transfer equipment (e.g. heat exchangers and pumps) to transfer heat from heat generation components to power conversion components. The heat exchanger surfaces can be modified through heat transfer enhancements to increase heat transfer and overall efficiency. This can lead to improved economics (capital, operating & maintenance costs) of a nuclear reactor system through reduced equipment size, coolant mass, etc. In this talk, the current and future efforts by Dr. Carasik's FAST Research Group to investigate heat transfer enhancements in support of the deployment of molten salt reactors and fusion devices will be discussed. These efforts include experimental testing of flow and heat transfer behavior due to swirled flow inserts created through traditional and state-of-the-art additive manufacturing methods. To date, this work has identified potential gaps in existing correlations of pressure drop for loose fitting swirled flow inserts and heat transfer experiments are ongoing. Additionally, the FAST Research Group has implemented Positron Emission Particle Tracking imaging to attempt to understand the detailed flow behavior (turbulent structures) around these heat transfer enhancements.

Biography

Dr. Lane Carasik is an Assistant Professor within the Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering at Virginia Commonwealth University. Dr. Carasik is also the Director of the Fluids in Advanced Systems and Technology (FAST) research group that focuses on thermal hydraulics research in advanced energy systems. Between January 2021 to June 2021, he was the Director of the VCU High Performance Research Computing (HPRC) core facility as a part-time administrative role providing strategic leadership for growing high performance computing needs. Before joining VCU, Dr. Carasik was a Nuclear Thermal Fluids Engineer at Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation and before that, Kairos Power as a CFD & Thermal Fluids Engineer. Dr. Carasik has a Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from Texas A&M University and a B.S. in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His research areas involve experimental efforts using scaled surrogate separate effects facilities, high-fidelity CFD modeling including RANS modeling, and LES with Nek5000 and OpenFOAM. He was a co-recipient of the 2020 ASME FED Moody and 2018 ASME CFD Best Paper Awards for work completed while employed at Kairos Power on a DOE GAIN Voucher. He is the current chair of the Diversity and Inclusion in ANS committee and an Executive Committee member of the ANS Thermal Hydraulics Division.