Thermophoretic and turbulent deposition of graphite dust in HTGR steam generators

Abstract The present study calculated the graphite dust deposition in the steam generator of HTGR by using a thermophoretic deposition model and a turbulent deposition model based on the temperature and flow field distributions calculated by a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model. The results showed that the heat flux along the heat transfer surface was not evenly distributed which affect the particle deposition. Thermophoretic deposition is the main factor causing small graphite dust particles to deposit on the surface while turbulent deposition plays the dominant role for large particle deposition. The results also indicate that the deposited particles are mainly small graphite dust particles in steam generator when the reactor is running at low power, with both small and large graphite dust particles at high reactor power levels with fewer medium size particles.