Hydrogen Containment Process for Nuclear Thermal Engine Ground Testing

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Hydrogen Containment Process for Nuclear Thermal Engine Ground Testing

Wang, Ten-See / Stewart, Eric T. / Canabal, Francisco

Nuclear thermal propulsion is an enabling technology for delivering large payloads to Mars, and ground testing of a nuclear thermal engine is an important part of the development. A critical issue in nuclear thermal engine ground testing is the presence of a large amount of hot hydrogen exhausted during the tests, which needs to be totally contained. A hydrogen containment process is proposed in this study in which an oxygen-rich burner and a tubular heat exchanger are employed for hydrogen containment. The objective of this effort is therefore to demonstrate that this new process could achieve the goal of total hydrogen containment for nuclear thermal engine ground testing. A multidimensional pressure-based multiphase computational fluid dynamics methodology was used to conceptually size the oxygen-rich burner, whereas a one-dimensional thermal analysis methodology was used to conceptually size the heat exchanger. Subsequently, a steady-state operation of the entire hydrogen containment process (from the pressure vessel through the nozzle, diffuser, burner, and heat exchanger) was simulated numerically, with the aforementioned computational fluid dynamics methodology. The computed results show that the exhaust hydrogen is reduced to meet the design goal at the end of the heat exchanger, demonstrating the hydrogen containment capability of the proposed process.