RESIDENCE TIME AND PRESSURE DROP ANALYSIS OF DELAY TANK FOR TRIGA REACTOR IN CENTER FOR SCIENCE AND APPLIED NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY, NATIONAL NUCLEAR AGENCY OF INDONESIA

• Main Author: Maulana Iqbal, Thoriq
• Format: Final Project
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/49764
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

GA (General Atomics) has a plan to stop the production of rod-shaped fuel elements, which is used by numbers of TRIGA reactors all over the world. This plan caused PSTNT BATAN (Center for Science and Applied Nuclear Technology, National Nuclear Agency of Indonesia) needs to redesign its TRIGA reactor and utilize plate-type fuel elements, which can be domestically produced, to keep its TRIGA reactor operating. The utilization of plate-type fuel element needs a delay tank to ensure the safety of the reactor. The delay tank needs to achieve a minimum residence time of 50 s if safety is to be assured. The objective of this research is to analyze the PSTNT's delay tank design to know its residence time and pressure drop. The analysis is conducted using CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) simulation. The research is continued by modifying the design to improve its performance. A delay tank with the best performance is defined as the one which has high residence time with as low pressure drop as possible. The CFD simulation shows that PSTNT's design of the delay tank produces a minimum residence time of 12.80 s and a pressure drop of 17.97 kPa. There were four alternatives of modified design evaluated in the CFD simulation. The best performance is acquired by the 4th alternative design, which has a minimum residence time of 34.36 s and a pressure drop of 11.92 kPa. The simulation also showed that to fulfill the 50 s residence time requirement, it needs more than just internal geometry modification.