Heat exchanger CFD analysis for the W7-X high temperature superconductor current lead prototype

The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is responsible for the design, construction and testing of the high temperature superconductor current leads for the Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) stellarator. Two prototypes of the W7-X current lead, using a meander-flow heat exchanger, have been tested in 2010 at KIT. Following an approach originally developed and applied to a sub-size mock-up heat exchanger, the Computational Fluid Dynamics code StarCD is used here for the 3D thermal-hydraulic analysis of the heat exchanger in the prototypes. The resulting friction and Nusselt parameters are then fed to a global 1D model of the current lead and the results compared to the measured pressure drop and temperature profiles along the heat exchanger.