Simulating test for thermal mixing in the hot gas chamber of the HTR-10 Original Research Article

The helium coolant at the outlet of the pebble bed core of the 10 MW High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor-Test Module exhibits a severe radial temperature deviation. In order to avoid damages at the downstream components due to alternating thermal loads such as the steam generator, a hot gas chamber is especially designed to solve the problem. Thermal mixing performance of the coolant in the hot gas chamber is experimentally investigated on a 1:1.5 scale model by air. The experimental result shows that within the Reynolds number range of 1.4×105–5.8×105, the hot gas chamber with a radial mixer reaches excellent thermal mixing of the coolant of about 94%. The flow resistance coefficient for the hot gas chamber is also presented.