Annals of Nuclear Energy 103 (2017) 74–84

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Annals of Nuclear Energy

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/anucene

Performance analysis of heat pipe radiator unit for space nuclear power
reactor
Chenglong Wang, Jing Chen, Suizheng Qiu, Wenxi Tian, Dalin Zhang ⇑, G.H. Su
Department of Nuclear Science and Technology, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, Shaanxi 710049, China
State Key Lab. of Multiphase Flow in Power Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, China
Shaanxi Key Lab. of Advanced Nuclear Energy and Technology, Xi’an Jiaotong University, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Heat pipe radiator, featured with remarkable advantages in heat transfer efficiency and inherent safety
Received 7 September 2016 with small specific mass and little weight, are widely adopted to the heat-rejection system for space
Received in revised form 10 November 2016 nuclear power reactors. In this paper, physical and numerical models are developed to obtain the startup
Accepted 14 January 2017
and transient behaviors of radiator unit with a potassium (K) heat pipe covered by fin under space envi-
ronment. The heat transfer limit theory is adopted as criteria for heat pipe operation success. Numerical
results indicated that according to the internal vapor flow regimes, the K heat pipe startup could be
Keywords:
divided into three distinct stages. The K heat pipe started up from frozen state successful and rapidly until
Heat pipe radiator unit
Space nuclear power reactor
the expected operation state is reached. Among the different heat transfer limits, only the sonic limit due
Heat transfer limits to choked flow restricts the K heat pipe during the second stage. Overall, for the heat-rejection system of
Startup and transient performance space nuclear power reactor, the heat pipe radiator unit can effectively radiated waste heat to the space
environment in 5 min and responses fast under transient conditions.
Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
As the further development of the outer space exploration and
exploitation, the space power systems with longer life and higher
reliability are strongly needed to support future exploration mis-
sions to the planets’ surface, for example, searching natural
resources He-3 on Moon. Power requirements for these space mis-
sions range from 10 s to 1000 s kWe for up to 15 years without
dependence on solar energy (Tournier and El-Genk, 2006). Other
traditional power such as chemical energy and fuel cells are lim-
ited in space environment, whereas the space nuclear power reac-
tor is an excellent option. Space nuclear power reactor can operate
continuously independent of the solar energy and has lighter
weight, higher power density, simpler structure. What is impor-
tant, it can provide sustainable and reliable electricity for up to
15 years. Over the past 50 years, much attention has been devoted
to the space nuclear power technology. The former Soviet Union
successively launched several thermionic conversion reactors
including TOPAZ reactors from 1960s. After that, the United States
has carried out space nuclear power program since the first space-
deployed reactor system SNAP-10A in 1965. The SP-100 program
⇑ Corresponding author at: Department of Nuclear Science and Technology, Xi’an
Jiaotong University, Xi’an, Shaanxi 710049, China.
E-mail address: dlzhang@mail.xjtu.edu.cn (D. Zhang).
from 1983 to 1994 develops more advanced space nuclear reactor
technology, which consists of a fast spectrum reactor coupled to
thermoelectric energy conversion units (Truscello and Rutger,
1992).
Owing to the low efficiency of thermoelectric conversion
(5–25%), considerable waste heat must be dissipated by the heat-
rejection system to maintain reasonable temperature distribution
and stable operation of power system (Yuwen, 1980). The heat-
rejection system is space-constructible radiator system composed
of coolant loops and radiator heat pipes. Due to no atmosphere
at outer space, heat radiators for space nuclear reactors cannot rely
on the terrestrial heat transfer mechanism such as conduction and
convection. Thus it must be able to radiate enough heat to space
environment (Bieger and Ma, 2011).
The application of Liquid Metal Heat Pipes (LMHP) to heat radi-
ators has drawn much attention to the advanced space nuclear
power programs. The Heat Pipe Radiator (HPR) has strong relation-
ship with safety operation of space nuclear power reactors. The
startup performance of the LMHP plays a very important role on
the HPR normal operation (Shengyun et al., 2009). Generally
speaking, heat pipes are always in transient status during different
conditions such as reactor shutdown, power change and uninten-
tional accidents. Having a better understanding of the startup
and transient heat transfer behaviors of the LMHP is of great
importance to the utilization of HPR (Tilton et al., 1988), as well

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.anucene.2017.01.015
0306-4549/Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 C. Wang et al. / Annals of Nuclear Energy 103 (2017) 74–84 75

Nomenclature

a evaporation or condensation coefficient Greek symbols

Av cross-sectional area of the vapor space, m2 a convective heat transfer coefficient, W/(m2
K)
Cp volumetric heat capacity, J/(m3
K) c ratio of specific heats
Dh heat pipe outer diameter, m e emissivity
Ef energy factor ews porosity of wick structure
F friction factor k mean free path, m
g gravitational acceleration, m/s2 l dynamic viscosity, Pa/s
h enthalpy, J/kg q density, kg/m3
hfg latent heat of vaporization, J/kg r surface tension, N/m
Hv height of the vapor space, m rmax maximum relative error
L length, m t specific volume, m3/kg
m_o evaporation or condensation rate per unit area, kg/ / angle of inclination, deg
(m2
s) w potential energy
M relative molecular weight
Mf momentum factor Subscripts
K permeability of the heat pipe wick, m2 a heat pipe adiabatic section
k thermal conductivity, W/(m
K) av average
Nu Nusselt number cap capillary
P pressure, Pa co heat pipe condenser
Pe Peclet number eff effective
Ph distance between two heat pipe centers, m ent entrainment
Q eV heat input at the heat pipe evaporator by convection, W eV heat pipe evaporator
Q rad radiation power of the heat pipes radiation unit, W f coolant NaK
Qv axial heat transport rate by vapor, W int liquid-metal interface of heat pipe
r coordinate direction, m l liquid working fluid of the heat pipe
rc effective capillary radius, m m maximum
Rev Reynolds number based on the diameter of vapor space rad radiation
Ru universal gas constant, J/(mol
K) son sonic
t time, s v ap vapor
T temperature, K V vapor in the heat pipe
T vapor transition temperature, K w heat pipe wall
V velocity, m/s ws heat pipe wick
W width of the vapor space, m
X quality of vapor Abbreviations
z heat pipe axial location, m HPR Heat Pipe Radiator
LMHP Liquid Metal Heat Pipe

as to lay a solid foundation for the optimal design of future high-
power space nuclear power reactors. In addition, heat transfer lim-
its are of great significance to the startup, operation and design of
heat pipes (Qu, 2011). Since heat pipes are fully enclosed devices,
many intuitional results on operating parameters related to the
internal flow and heat transfer conditions could not be obtained
by experimental method. Hence, numerical simulations are neces-
sarily adopted to focus on the internal operating characteristic of
heat pipes in HPR.
The startup of LMHP from a frozen state contains very compli-
cated physical phenomena and mechanism, involving numbers of
non-linear mass and heat transport and exchange process coupled
with flow dynamics (El-Genk and Tournier, 2011). Cotter firstly
proposed general heat pipe theory in 1965 and divided heat pipe
startup into three basic transient modes (Cotter, 1965). After this
theory, many experiments of the startup or transient operation of
LMHPs have been conducted by researchers to validate with Cot-
ter’s theory (Deverall et al., 1972; Tolubinskii et al., 1978; Tilton
et al., 1988; Ponnappan and Chang, 1994; Dickinson et al., 1998;
Glass et al., 1999). Besides these experiments, numerical models
and codes about heat pipes simulation have been developed
(Levy, 1971; Brovalsky et al., 1976; Costello et al., 1986; Jang,
1988, 1995; Seo and El-Genk, 1988; Cao and Faghri, 1992, 1993;
Tournier and El-Genk, 1996). Although significant advances have
been made for the development of heat pipe, it is noteworthy that
only a limited number of investigations focus on the startup and
transient behaviors of the LMHP in the heat pipe radiator of space
nuclear power reactor.
This paper focuses on the performance analysis of the startup
and transient characteristics of heat pipe radiator unit and its pos-
sible heat transport limits under space radiation environment.
Finite difference method is adopted to solve the heat conduction
equations for the fin attached on the heat pipe condenser. Finite
element method is adopted to solve the high temperature K heat
pipe heated by secondary coolant (NaK) of space nuclear power
reactor. The governing equations are programed by FORTRAN code
to obtain the distributions of the temperature, pressure, velocity
and other key operating parameters. The present paper firstly
describes the heat transfer and internal flow characteristics of
the heat pipes radiator unit during the reactor startup. Secondly,
operation constraints about K heat pipe startup are discussed
and analyzed. Finally, the transient response and heat transfer per-
formance of the heat pipes radiator unit are simulated in detail.
2. System description of HPR unit for space nuclear power
reactor
2.1. Space nuclear power reactor
Various conceptual designs of space nuclear power reactors
have been developed over past several decades. The baseline
76 C. Wang et al. / Annals of Nuclear Energy 103 (2017) 74–84

design of SP-100 is adopted as reference in this paper. As shown in HPR, half area of heat pipe condenser is covered by copper fin.
Fig. 1, in each subsystem, the dual TherMoelectric-ElectroMagnetic The copper fin is 0.4 mm in thickness and 30 mm in length, con-
(TE-EM) pump is employed to circulate both primary and sec- necting all the heat pipes as a whole heat transfer part. Detailed
ondary coolants. Heat generated in the reactor core with control heat pipe parameters are listed in Table 1.
drums is removed by liquid lithium circulating in the primary cool-
ant loop, then flow into TE power converter to generate the elec-
tricity (EL-Genk and Seo, 1990). Meanwhile, the secondary 3. Numerical modeling and predictions
coolant NaK transports the rest of the thermal power to the heat
pipe radiator, where the waste heat is rejected into space by radi- 3.1. Convective heat transfer model for secondary side coolant
ation. Due to the high temperature need for TE power converter
(>500 K), all the reactor loops are in the high temperature filed. The flowing NaK in the coolant duct of HPR transports the waste
Eutectic alloy NaK-78 is selected as the primary and secondary heat to the heat pipe evaporator by forced convection. Cess and
coolant for several kinds of space nuclear power reactor such as Grosh (1958) assumed inviscid potential flow and constant
Russian TOPAZ and American SNAP-10A. (Tournier and El-Genk, temperature of the cylinder surface, which has been validated by
1995; El-Genk, 2009). experimental studies of liquid metal external flow (Ishikawa and
Leipziger, 1971), and the theoretical equation for the average
Nusselt number is derived as follows:
2.2. Heat pipe radiator unit

1=2
1=2
w P h  Dh 1=2
The radiator, using heat pipes as main heat dissipation compo- Nu ¼ 0:718 ½PeV;max ð1Þ
nents, consists of coolant ducts, support rings, liquid metal heat Dh Ph
pipes and fins. Compared with traditional liquid metal radiator,
heat pipe radiator is a better choice because of its inherent redun- Dh V max qc C p;c
dancy and high heat transfer efficient with little weight. Heat pipe
ðPeÞV;max ¼ ð2Þ
kc
is long-lived without moving parts, noise, vibration and can be
operated in low and no gravity environment as a result of where Pe is the Peclet number, w is the potential energy, Ph is the
capillary-force driving flow of the working fluid. Furthermore, distance between two heat pipe centerlines, and V max is the velocity
the utilization of parallel heat pipes provides high system reliabil- of coolant in the narrowest flow channel.
ity without failures propagation and single-point failures. It has a The total heat transfer is below:
great significance to study the transient characteristics of heat pipe
radiator. Fig. 2 shows the detailed structure of HPR system. It can X
e

be seen that HPR system contains many heat transfer units. Each
Q eV ¼ aAeV;i ðT f  T eV;i Þ ð3Þ
i¼1
unit consists of a high temperature potassium heat pipe and cov-
ered fin to enhance heat transfer. Heat from secondary coolant where i is the node number of heat pipe evaporator, AeV;i is heat
(red region in Fig. 2) is transported to the heat pipe evaporator transfer area of ith heat pipe evaporator, and T eV;i is the wall tem-
by forced convection, and then transported to heat pipe condenser perature of ith heat pipe evaporator.
by wick and vapor space. Finally, Heat is rejected to the space envi-
ronment by radiation from covered fin.
Table 1 lists the designed parameters and materials of the K 3.2. Heat pipe model
heat pipe of SP-100 space reactor power system (EL-Genk and
Seo, 1990). The heat pipe evaporator section is 0.155 m in length. Based on the work of Wang et al. (2013), the heat pipe heat
The condenser section exposed to the space environment is transfer model consists of three conjugate heat transfer regions,
0.58 m in length. In order to enlarge the heat transfer area of as briefly shown in Section 3.2.1 and 3.2.2.

Fig. 1. Schematic of SP-100 space nuclear power reactor.

 C. Wang et al. / Annals of Nuclear Energy 103 (2017) 74–84 77

Fig. 2. Structure schematic of HPR system.

Table 1  2
Parameters of HPR unit. p M l
T P ð8Þ
Parameters Value 2  104 Ru qD
Heat pipe evaporator length Lev (m) 0.155 First stage: free molecular flow regime.
Heat pipe condenser length Lco (m) 0.58 Initially the working fluid potassium is in the solid state and the
Heat pipe total length L (m) 0.735
vapor flow belongs to free molecular flow. Thus the liquid-vapor
Outer radius (cm) 1.651
Wall thickness (cm) 0.0508
interface could be set as adiabatic boundary condition.
Radius of vapor space (cm) 1.521 Second stage: transition flow regime.
Wick average porosity 0.65 As a part of continuum flow develops in the heat pipe vapor
Heat pipe working fluid Potassium space, the following expression given by Collier (1981) is adopted
Fin material Copper
to simulate vaporization and condensation at the liquid–vapor
Fin thickness (mm) 0.4
Fin length (mm) 30 interface:
Fin emissivity 0.9  rffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi

2aews M Pint Pv
_o¼
m pffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
ffi  pffiffiffiffiffiffi ð9Þ
2a 2pRu T int Tv
3.2.1. Heat pipe wall and wick where the subscript of int denotes the liquid-vapor interface. Then
Due to the very small velocity of liquid potassium flow in the the axial heat transport rate Q v of the heat pipe vapor can be
wick and also high thermal conductivity of liquid metal, it is then obtained, Q_ ¼ hfg  m
_ o .Third stage: continuum flow regime.
assumed that influence of the liquid flow in the wick is negligible Continuum flow exists in the entire vapor space. The vapor flow
and the heat conduction model is employed in the wick. The is supposed to be quasi-steady, compressible and one-dimensional
unsteady, two-dimensional heat conduction model is applied to laminar flow with consideration of temperature drop. The govern-
the heat pipe wall and wick. The governing equation is give as ing equations of vapor density, quality, velocity, pressure, and tem-
follows: perature are as follows:
   
  
@T i 1 @ @T i @ @T i dq 1 dX q tv X q Ru T dP
C p;i ¼ rki þ ki ; i ¼ 1; 2 ð4Þ ¼  2 ðtv  tl Þ þ —1 ð10Þ
@t r @r @r @z @z dz t dz P hfg M dz

T i ¼ T out t<0 ð5Þ ("  # )

dX v t2 1 V 2 X q tv Ru T dP FV 2
¼  þ 1 
where T out is the environment temperature, and i = 1, 2 denotes the dz ðtv  tl ÞV 2 Mf P t2 hfg M dy 8DtM f
heat pipe wall and wick, respectively. In addition, equivalent volu-
t2 _0
2m
metric heat capacity and thermal conductivity are processed for the 
wick region (Jun and Hong, 2000) as:
ðtv  tl Þ HV
ð11Þ
C p;eff ¼ ews C l þ ð1  ews ÞC p;s ð6Þ
 
dV tm_ 0 Vðtv  tl Þ dX q VX q tg Ru T dP
kl ððkl þ ks Þ  ð1  ews Þðkl  ks ÞÞ ¼ þ þ —1 ð12Þ
keff ¼ ð7Þ dz H t dz P t hfg M dz
ððkl þ ks Þ þ ð1  ews Þðkl  ks ÞÞ
h i
E V2 V2
2hfg þ ðtv ttl Þ ðh0  h þ f2 þ 20 Þ  E1 tfg 8D  ðtvt2 tl Þ
_0
Mf m h FV 2
dP  Ef
F
where the subscript of ws represents wick structure, l represents VH 8D
liquid state, s represents solid state. ¼   f

dz ðtv tl Þ 1 hfg M f hfg X q tv Mf ðtv tl Þ C p Ru T 2

t þ E V2  E t2 1  h M  E
Ru T
f f P fg f t2 h M P fg

3.2.2. Vapor flow model ð13Þ

Different mathematical models are adopted to simulate three
vapor flow regimes during heat pipe startup. The vapor transition dT Ru T 2 dP
temperature from free molecular flow to continuum flow is ¼ ð14Þ
dz hfg MP dz
derived as follows (Jang, 1988):
78 C. Wang et al. / Annals of Nuclear Energy 103 (2017) 74–84
where the subscripts of l and v represent saturation liquid and
vapor, respectively.
The vapor flow and heat transfer are coupled with the heat pipe
wall and wick by heat and mass exchange at the liquid-vapor inter-
face. All above governing equations of these regions are solved
simultaneously in order to acquire the reasonable results.
3.3. Heat transport limit of heat pipe
Although the heat pipe has an excellent performance of heat
transfer, there are a series of limitations to heat transport. Physical
factors restricting the heat pipe heat transfer are capillary force,
sonic speed, and entrainment phenomenon. Three heat transport
limits (the capillary limit, the entrainment limit and the sonic
limit) are considered for the liquid metal heat pipe owing to the
high operating temperature (Rohaniar and Tien, 1973).
3.3.1. Capillary limit
The capillary operation limit is encountered when the maxi-
mum capillary capability of the porous wick cannot overcome
the combined liquid and vapor pressure losses along the heat pipe.
The capillary pressure head for circulating the heat pipes working
fluid will be higher if increases the liquid surface tension and
decreases the radius of the liquid-vapor meniscus in the surface
pores of the wick. When the capillary limit occurs, liquid cannot
be pumped to the surface. Dry-out will occur and the heat pipe
may be overheated. The expression for the capillary limit (Chi,
1976) can be written as:
2r
rc
 ql gDv cos / þ ql gLh sin /
Q cap;m ¼ ð15Þ
ðF l þ F v ÞLeff
Leff ¼ 0:5LeV þ La þ 0:5Lco ð16Þ
ll
Fl ¼ ð17Þ
KAws ql hfg
ðf v Rev Þlv
Fv ¼ ð18Þ
2Av r 2hv qv hfg
where r c is the effective capillary radius, Fl and Fv are friction
coefficients for the liquid and vapor, respectively, and ql gLh sin /
represents axial static pressure of the liquid.
3.3.2. Sonic limit
The heat pipe has a constant diameter and the steam acceler-
ates due to the adding steam in the evaporation section, and decel-
erates for the vapor condensation in the condensation section. At a
somewhat higher temperature choking at the evaporator exit may
limit the total power handling capability of the pipe. When the
steam reaches the sonic velocity in the evaporation section, critical
flow will occur. Changes in the condenser heat rejection rate can-
not be transmitted upstream to the evaporator section. It means
the further reduction in the condenser temperature and pressure
will not increase the vapor flow rate, but will cause the vapor
velocity to become supersonic in the condenser section. The sonic
limit, is always dominant at low temperature, should be avoided.
The heat pipe sonic limit can be expressed as (Deverall et al.,
1972):

1=2
cv Ru T o
Q son;m ¼ Av qo hfg ð19Þ
2ðcv þ 1ÞM
where T o is the vapor temperature at the beginning of the evapora-
tor, qo is taken as the saturation density corresponding to T o . hfg is
the latent heat of potassium, M is the molecular weight of the vapor,
cv is the vapor specific heat ratio, Rv is the ideal gas constant
3.3.3. Entrainment limit
The entrainment limit arises when the shear stress exerted by
the vapor at the liquid-vapor interface in the wick overcomes the
liquid surface tension force. In such case, waves are generated on
the free surface of the liquid working fluid with fast vapor flow.
The interaction between the liquid and vapor phases increases
with the vapor velocity. Finally, along with separative interfaces
forming on wave peaks, the vapor carries away liquid droplets into
reversed vapor flow back to the condenser, thus preventing the liq-
uid from replenishing the evaporator wick. The entrainment limit
is determined by the following expression:
rq 0:5
Q ent;m ¼ Av hfg v ð20Þ
z
where z ¼ 2r hs is defined by Chi (1976) and r hs is the hydraulic
radius of the pore in the wick.
3.4. Fin model
Since the fin length is much larger than its thickness as listed in
Table 1 and the copper has high thermal conductivity, the heat
transfer of the copper fin can be assumed to one dimensional heat
conduction model coupled with heat radiation. The fin geometric
view factors for the heat radiation calculations are (1) from fin
outer surface to the environment f 01 (2) from fin outer surface to
heat pipe condenser f 02 (3) from fin inner surface to the upper
and lower ends of the radiator cavity f i1 (4) self-radiation of the
fin inner surface f i2 . The fin governing equation can be expressed
as:
2
ðf o1 e þ f o2 e þ f i1 e þ f i2 eÞrT 4fin ðf o2 e þ f i2 eÞrT 4con
d T fin
¼ 
dx
2 kfin
bfin kfin
bfin
ðf o1 e þ f i1 eÞrT 4out
 ð21Þ
kfin
bfin
where T fin and T con are the temperatures of fin elements and heat
pipe condenser, respectively. T out is the environment temperature.
3.5. Numerical solution
Based on above mathematical models of heat pipe and fin, the
finite element method (FEM) is employed for the heat pipe wall
and wick to discrete the governing equations. The one-
dimensional vapor flow model is used to simulate the central vapor
flow and the Runge-Kutta method is applied to solve the first-order
differential nonlinear equations. In addition, the finite difference
method (FDM) is applied to the fin calculation. The governing
equations are solved separately for each region and coupling is
implemented at the interface between each region. Fig. 3 shows
the two-dimension mesh scheme of the heat pipe.
In the present paper, HPR unit performance analysis code is
developed by FORTRAN 95. Fig. 4 presents the brief calculation
flowchart of the code. The K heat pipe is initially in the ambient
temperature. It absorbs the heat at heat pipe evaporator from sec-
ondary loop coolant by force convection. Meanwhile, it radiates the
energy to the space. During the heat pipe startup, three types of
heat transport limits are predicted to determine the operating state
of the heat pipe. Then the governing equation of the fin is solved to
complete a time step calculation.
 C. Wang et al. / Annals of Nuclear Energy 103 (2017) 74–84 79

Fig. 3. Two-dimensional mesh scheme of heat pipe.

Fig. 5. Comparison of numerical results and the experiment data.

Fig. 4. Flowchart of HPR unit analysis code.

4. Results and discussion

4.1. Validation of HPR unit model

Due to pure conduction model of the fin, it has no need to valid

this model. The experiment results conducted by Guangren et al.
(2014) are adopted to validate the K heat pipe model. In this exper-
iment, the K heat pipe had an evaporator and an adiabatic section
of 200 mm in length, respectively. Changeable heat flux was added
on the heat pipe evaporator and the condenser section was cooled
by thermal radiation during vacuum startup. Detailed description
of experiment apparatus and settings can be found in the work
by Guangren et al. (2014). Fig. 5 shows the comparison of the cal-
culated results and the experiment data during the heat pipe
Fig. 6. Wall temperature distribution of the heat pipe during startup.
startup. It can be seen that the numerical results of the axial wall
temperature profile are in reasonable agreement with experimen-
tal data. The maximum relative error rm is 15.5% occurring before Fig. 6 shows the axial temperature distribution at outer wall
the potassium melting in the condenser section. When heat pipe is during heat pipe startup. From Fig. 6, during the first stage of
fully active, absolute values of rm are all within 2%. Overall, the 0-144 s, the wall temperature at the evaporator increases rapidly
developed heat pipe model is valid for the HPR unit analysis code. exceeding the melting temperature (336 K) of potassium. A very
large axial temperature gradient exists between the evaporator
4.2. Startup simulation and condenser, which indicates that the K heat pipe does not effec-
tively work. Owing to the free-molecule flow regime in the vapor
The startup of the K heat pipe is initiated with the applied space and extremely low heat and mass transfer rate through the
convective heat transfer coefficient a and coolant NaK temperature liquid-vapor interface, external wall temperature is still in the
T f linearly increasing from 1500 W/(m2
K) and 301 K to initial temperature 300 K. Since a continuum vapor flow region is
14052 W/(m2
K) and 817 K, respectively. established in partial of the evaporator at 144 s, the vaporization
80 C. Wang et al. / Annals of Nuclear Energy 103 (2017) 74–84
and condensation of potassium at the liquid-vapor interface are
significant so that heat is mainly transported by phase change with
a continuum flow front moving toward the condenser. Wall
temperatures increasing at the condenser section is obviously
accelerated. Until continuum flow prevails in the vapor space, most
of the K heat pipe performs actively, except near the end of the
condenser. About 243 s, as continuum flow is developed in the
entire vapor space, the K heat pipe becomes near-isothermal and
the entire length of the condenser participates in effective heat
rejection to space environment by radiation. The K heat pipe could
be considered to startup from the frozen state completely and suc-
cessfully. However, because of continued heat transfer from cool-
ant NaK to the evaporator, the entire heat pipe temperatures
raises further until a steady state condition is reached at about
320 s.
Fig. 7 shows temperature variations of the K heat pipe at six
axial locations during startup. The wall temperatures at the evap-
orator increase linearly resulting from the linearly rise of the NaK
coolant temperature, whereas those at the condenser exhibit a
steep rise due to phase change when the vapor is in the transition
flow regime.The variation of average vapor temperature in the K
heat pipe during startup, as well as the applied heat load at the
evaporator as a function of time, are shown in Fig. 8. After 144 s,
continuum flow has been established at the part of evaporator sec-
tion, while in the rest regions the vapor is still in free-molecule
flow. As evaporation at the liquid-vapor interface continues, the
continuum vapor flow moves forward. Continuous heat input into
the evaporator wall and wick leads to the increase of the average
vapor temperature. Until continuum flow exists in the vapor space
over the entire heat pipe length at 243 s, the average vapor tem-
perature rises relatively rapidly and then suddenly slows down
to reach steady state of 802.6 K, as T f of the coolant NaK and the
related convective heat transfer coefficient a keep constant at
about 300 s.
Fig. 9 shows the temperature distribution of fin during the
startup. The fin temperature increases rapidly owing to heat trans-
fer from the fin root section connected with the heat pipe con-
denser between 144 s and 243 s. At 244 s, the fin has presented a
good isothermal performance. With a temperature increase of heat
pipe condenser, temperature of the fin root continuously goes up.
The radiation power of the fin increases rapidly and temperature
gradient between the fin root and adiabatic end gradually enlarges
after 244 s. At the steady state, although the largest temperature
Fig. 7. Wall temperatures variations at different axial locations along the K heat
pipe.
difference in the entire fin is about 80 K, the fin achieves an aver-
age temperature of 760 K. It effectively radiates heat to the sur-
rounding environment.
From all above analysis, the HPR unit successfully startups from
the frozen state to the steady state in about 5 min. Next, the
detailed performance analysis of HPR unit would be conducted.
Fig. 10 presents the average temperature variations of heat pipe
evaporator, liquid-vapor interface, condenser and fin. Initially, no
evaporation occurs at liquid-vapor interface, large temperature
gradients exist between heat pipe evaporator and other three loca-
tions. Since the heat begins to be transferred to the condenser
through the liquid-vapor interface at 144 s, temperatures at the
interface, condenser and fin sharply rise. When the steady state
is established at about 310 s, the average temperature of the evap-
orator reaches about 807 K. The K heat pipe shows excellent
isothermal performance that a small temperature difference of
5.7 K exists between the evaporator and condenser. In addition,
the average temperature of the fin is 49.6 K lower than that of
the heat pipe condenser.
Fig. 11 shows the heat transport limits variation during startup.
After 144 s, with a region of the continuum flow existing in the
heat pipe, the heat transported by vapor Qv increases, whereas its
value is equal to the sonic limit, which indicates that the sonic
limit is encountered in K heat pipe and a maximum power differ-
ence of about 200 W exists between Qv and the heat added on the
heat pipe evaporator Qev. Since most of the input heat is utilized to
the vaporization of potassium, the condenser and fin temperatures
are still low so that the radiation power Qrad is significantly lower
than Qv. As the continuum vapor flow prevails, most part of the K
heat pipe performs active. At 243 s, energy is mainly transported as
latent heat, the sonic and entrainment limits variation features
with a sharp increase and the capillary limit increases slowly. It
can be seen that Qv. is below far away from these limits. It shows
a large safety margin at the third startup stage. It is noteworthy
that Qev decreases by the weakened convective heat transfer, thus
slowing down the Qv at the beginning of the third stage, and then
Qev rises at 260 s. The radiator completely works after 243 s, radi-
ating more heat away owing to the increasing surface tempera-
tures of partial condenser and fin, which indicates that the quasi
steady state is reached.
Overall, the heat pipe startup could not be threatened by the
entrainment and capillary limits. The radiator unit reaches the
expected operation with sufficient safety margin and radiates
1112 W heat to the space environment at steady state. Although
the sonic limit could not make the heat pipe dry-out, the K heat
pipe should be designed with attention to the sonic limit to meet
the startup demand of the space nuclear power reactors.
Fig. 12 shows the detailed vapor key parameters distribution
during the third stage. Since continuum vapor flow exists in the
entire K heat pipe after 243 s, the vapor temperature, density and
pressure decrease along with the evaporator slightly while
increases along with the condenser, which is contrary to the veloc-
ity variation. These are because in the evaporator, a large amount
of potassium evaporating leads to acceleration of the vapor, while
the pressure decreases and accordingly the vapor temperature
drops mildly consistent with relationship of Eq.(14). These param-
eters present opposite varying trends at the condenser resulting
from the condensation of potassium. In addition, pressure cannot
recover completely at the condenser due to friction loss. The drop
of vapor pressure in the K heat pipe is so small. That is the main
reason why the K heat pipe has good isothermal performance.
From the Fig. 12, the vapor temperature and density variations
are significant at the third startup stage. That is due to the obvious
compressibility of vapor. With time goes by, the compressibility of
vapor weakened, key parameters distribution becomes more
uniform.
 C. Wang et al. / Annals of Nuclear Energy 103 (2017) 74–84 81

Fig. 8. Variations of key parameters during startup.

Fig. 9. Fin temperature distributions during startup.

Fig. 10. Temperatures variations of heat pipe evaporator, liquid-vapor interface, Fig. 11. Heat transport limits variation during startup.
condenser and fin.

4.3. Performance analysis of HPR unit temperature of coolant NaK to change the heat input for the pur-
pose of simulating space nuclear reactor power change transients,
Heat pipe operation reaches steady state about 5 min. After the detailed temperature variations are shown in Fig. 13. For tran-
that, two transient operating conditions are simulated by varying sient condition 1, the temperature of coolant NaK Tf increases to
82 C. Wang et al. / Annals of Nuclear Energy 103 (2017) 74–84

Table 2
Parameters of HPR unit with different heat loads.

Tf of coolant NaK/K Tv, av of the heat pipe/K (Tev,av  Tco,av)/K Qrad/W

772.7 764.3 5.2 911.1
812.7 802.6 5.7 1112
852.7 840.7 7 1341.4

(a) Temperature and density distribution

(b) Velocity and pressure distribution

Fig. 12. Vapor key parameters distribution in the K heat pipe.

Fig. 13. Temperature variations under two transient conditions.

852.7 K, the average temperatures of the heat pipe evaporator,

condenser and the fin also increase. When a new steady state is
reached, the heat pipe and the fin operate at 842 K and 787.6 K,
respectively. For transient condition 2, the decrease of Tf causes
less heat added on the heat pipe, the average temperatures of
the heat pipe evaporator, condenser and the fin decrease to
768 K, 762.8 K and 728.5 K at 355 s, respectively. Furthermore,
since the temperatures of the K heat pipe and the fin reach the Fig. 14. Vapor parameters variations under two transient conditions.
 C. Wang et al. / Annals of Nuclear Energy 103 (2017) 74–84
steady state in about 25 s, the HPR unit has a fast transient
response when changing the heat load.Table 2 presents key param-
eters of HPR unit with different heat loads. With an increase of the
coolant NaK temperature Tf, the operating vapor average tempera-
ture T v ;av increases from 764 K to 840 K. The HPR unit releases
waste heat of 911.1 W, 1112 W and 1341.4 W to the space environ-
ment. The radiation power Qrad, which is proportional to the fourth
power of the fin surface temperature, increase about 20% with T v ;av
varying 40 K. In addition, the temperature drop between heat pipe
evaporator and condenser ðT eV ;av  T co;av Þ, increases with the
operating temperature T v ;av . From the equation keff ¼ Q v leff =
AðT e;av  T c;av Þ, (Jun and Hong, 2000), it can be derived that the
equivalent thermal conductivity keff of the K heat pipe can be as
high as 82255 W/(m
K). It is several orders of magnitudes higher
than that of a metal rod. Thus, HPR unit in space nuclear power
reactor has a remarkable heat transfer performance under different
transient operations.
Fig. 14 shows vapor parameters variations under two transient
conditions. All the vapor parameters variations present a similar
axial distribution under each condition, whereas the variation gra-
dients of parameters are different under these two transients. For
transient condition 1, the vapor temperature of the K heat pipe is
76.5 K higher, whereas the pressure and density are more than
three times as high as those for transient condition 2. Under each
transients, the mass injection of vapor leads to the linear increase
of the vapor velocity along the evaporator. Owing to the vapor
acceleration and friction effect, the vapor pressure falls at the evap-
orator.Compared with initial state, with an increase of heat input
and vapor continuous evaporation into vapor region, the vapor
mass flow rate m _ v increases and it releases more heat under tran-
sient condition 1. The vapor pressure increases with an increase of
its temperature, leading to increase of vapor density, which could
be explained by the ideal gas state equation. On the basis of
Cotter (1965) heat pipe theory v v ¼ m _ v =qv , due to the larger
increasing amplitude of the vapor density qv than the mass flow
rate m _ v , the vapor velocity v v decreases. The relationship between
vapor pressure and velocity are in reasonable agreement with Ber-
noulli’s equation. Similar analysis can be applied to the transient
condition 2.
5. Conclusions
This paper presents a numerical simulation on the startup and
transient characteristics of a heat pipes radiator unit for space nuclear
power reactor with consideration of several heat transfer limits of the
K heat pipe. Several conclusions are summarized as follows:
 The startup of the K heat pipe can be divided into three succes-
sive stages. The K heat pipe starts up from frozen state success-
fully and rapidly in about 5 min. In the heat rejection system of
space nuclear reactor, the radiation power Qrad of the HPR unit
gradually increases as the continuum vapor flow establishes
through the entire vapor space during startup. Because large
temperature gradient disappears and Qrad is relatively high in
the third startup stage, the K heat pipe could be considered fully
active. The radiator reaches expected state and effectively radi-
ates waste heat to the space environment with excellent
isothermality of the K heat pipe.
 The sonic limit is encountered in the K heat pipe during the sec-
ond stage until the vapor velocity leaving evaporator is smaller
than the local sonic speed. It should be paid more attention to
the heat pipe design and applications. In addition, heat transfer
performance of the K heat pipe is not restricted by entrainment
and capillary limits during startup. The K heat pipe has sufficient
safety margin especially when reaches the quasi steady state.
83
 The HPR unit applied to the space nuclear power reactor has
good heat transfer performance and fast response under
transient conditions. With a variation of 40 K in the operating
temperature T v ;av of the K heat pipe, the radiation power Qrad
increase about 20%. The equivalent thermal conductivity of
the K heat pipe can be as high as 82255 W/(m
K), showing a
remarkable heat transfer performance of HPR unit in space
nuclear power reactor system.
Acknowledgement
Financial support for Chenglong Wang is provided by China
Initiative Postdocs Supporting Program (BX201600124) and the
Chinese National Science Foundation (Grant Nos. 91326201and
11475132).
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