Preliminary Study on Fluid Dynamics in Manifolds of the Reactor Cavity Cooling System – The Experimental Power Reactor Test Facility

The RCCS test facility of the Experimental Power Reactor (RDE) in Indonesia use a passive cooling system in order to remove the heat generation from reactor core to the environment. One of the important parts of the RCCS test facility is a pair of manifolds. It contributes for the cooling process by its geometry and material properties. There are two types specific manifolds function. One of the manifold functions as a flow divider and the other as a flow collector. The objectives of this preliminary study are to investigate the fluid characteristic inside them. The analytical and CFD simulation were used to predict the fluid characteristics are varied from 20°C to 47°C on the flow divider and 38°C to 90°C the flow collector. The results obtained shows that the fluid in the flow collector with temperature of 76°C has a mass flow rate of 0.102126 kg/s. Meanwhile in the flow divider, the lower fluid temperature of 20°C has mass flow rate of 0.080678 kg/s. It shows that increase of temperature will increase the mass flow rate in the manifold. (paper)