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Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Remembering ANS member Gil Brown
Brown
The nuclear community is mourning the loss of Gilbert Brown, who passed away on July 11 at the age of 77 following a battle with cancer.
Brown, an American Nuclear Society Fellow and an ANS member for nearly 50 years, joined the faculty at Lowell Technological Institute—now the University of Massachusetts–Lowell—in 1973 and remained there for the rest of his career. He eventually became director of the UMass Lowell nuclear engineering program. After his retirement, he remained an emeritus professor at the university.
Sukesh Aghara, chair of the Nuclear Engineering Department Heads Organization, noted in an email to NEDHO members and others that “Gil was a relentless advocate for nuclear energy and a deeply respected member of our professional community. He was also a kind and generous friend—and one of the reasons I ended up at UMass Lowell. He served the university with great dedication. . . . Within NEDHO, Gil was a steady presence and served for many years as our treasurer. His contributions to nuclear engineering education and to this community will be dearly missed.”
Haifei Deng, Desheng Cheng, Weihua Wang, Kaiping Li, Bo Shi, Jinhong Yang
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 72 | Number 2 | August 2017 | Pages 188-198
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1320495
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Helium (He) gas Cooled Ceramic Breeder (HCCB) test blanket module (TBM) is the primary option of the Chinese TBM program. In order to enhance the cooling ability of the first wall (FW) of the HCCB TBM and reduce the circulation power, a binary mixtures gas of He gas and additive CO2 deserves to be another option for the coolant of the blanket, based on high temperature gas-cooled reactors which are a generation-IV fission reactor concept, when it is reported that forced convective heat transfer can be enhanced by means of binary mixing with unreactive gas (e.g., CO2, molecular weight 44). This technique can significantly enhance the plant’s overall efficiency and reduce the cost of electricity. In order to evaluate the cooling performance of the He/CO2 binary mixtures gas and its circulation power in the FW of the HCCB TBM, a three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) numerical simulation, combined experimental research method is applied. The results reveal that under the condition of the cooling requirements of the FW (e. g., maximum temperature, radial temperature gradient) similar to the pure He gas, the flow velocity and circulation power of the He/CO2 binary mixtures gas (mole fraction 0.4) are reduced by 70% and 87%, respectively. It implies that the thermal efficiency of a He-cooled blanket system can be fairly enhanced by means of this technique. In the near future experiment plan, it should be tested to validate the correlative cooling scheme of the HCCB TBM, in which the pure He gas and He/CO2 binary mixtures gas are used as coolant, respectively, at our High-Pressure Helium-Cooled Loop facility. The CFD numerical results will be selected as the reference for the experiments. A new approach may be provided for cooling the high heat flux components of a fusion reactor.
