Sodium is used as a coolant in the fast reactor’s primary and secondary loops to
transfer enthalpy from the reactor and transport it to the expander. However,
handling sodium is difficult, and it can be hazardous if it comes into contact
with air, which causes an exothermic reaction. During maintenance of sodium loop
components, isolation is typically accomplished with valves. The valve leaking
is caused by the seal or the gland. Seal leakage is compensated because it
occurs within the line, but gland leakage should be zero because the liquid is
harmful. To address this requirement, the author attempted to design a special
type of valve in which sodium is allowed to rise through an annular path along
the stem and heat transfer is augmented in such a way that the required enthalpy
is evacuated to freeze sodium inside the annular path, confirming the fail-safe
zero gland leakage. A finned tube assembly is fitted around the stem to achieve
this concept of expanded surface heat transfer. However, the issue is to design
the fin tube assembly, as well as the number of fins and their dimensions.
Normally, these things are done through a series of physical model studies,
which is inefficient. In our study, we used conjugate heat transfer analysis to
design the fin tube assembly, which was then tested using a physical model.
