Travail de fin d'études et stage[BR]- Travail de fin d'études : Dynamic molten salt test loop: Development of a simulation tool for heat balance assessment and data post-processing[BR]- Stage d'insertion professionnelle : John Cockerill

Abstract

This master thesis aims to improve a numerical tool that simulates the heat transfers taking place on the Dynacor molten salt test loop built by John Cockerill. The purpose of this loop is to reproduce the conditions met in the receiver of a concentrated solar power plant using molten salt in order to analyze the corrosive effect of the salt in these conditions. We also wanted to establish test plans to experimentally assess parameters of the test section that cannot directly be measured and to analyze the data retrieved from the first circulations performed on the loop. The thesis therefore contains an introduction developing the context in which the Dynacor loop was built and a state of the art on molten salt loops. The Dynacor loop is then presented in greater detail so the reader can understand the computations implemented in the heat balance assessment tool. This latter is described in a chapter including a description of the initial tool which was coded in Visual Basic for Applications followed by the development of the improved tool coded in Python. After that, a chapter is dedicated to the description of test plans to evaluate the coating resistivity and the heat transfer coefficient at the test section. A procedure to determine the uncertainty associated to these computed parameters is also given. The data from a first circulation on the test loop are then analyzed and compared to the python tool results in order to calibrate this latter before concluding the master thesis. The developed Python tool behaves as expected qualitatively and could be further calibrated by performing more circulations on the Dynacor loop. A user friendly interface could also be added to this tool. Concerning the assessment of the parameters at the test section, no conclusion can be given for now since no test has already been performed.