Investigation on the mechanism of enhancing heat transfer in a pebble bed by adding in the non-fixed number of smaller-sized spheres

Enhancing heat transfer in the pebble bed reactor could reduce the surface temperatures and lower the possibility of forming hot-spots. The effectiveness of inserting a smaller sphere into a structured pebble bed on optimizing the heat transfer has been confirmed, and yet, the mechanism of heat transfer enhancement is still not fully understood. The impact of the quantity and size of the small spheres on the heat transfer characteristics has been investigated in this study and the mechanism of enhancement was analyzed. It was found that: (1) When the volume or the surface area of the inserted sphere was kept the same, the overall heat transfer coefficients (HTC) of the pebble bed in case 2 or case 3 respectively demonstrated 1.4% or 2.8% higher than that of the bed in case 1; (2) the overall HTC showed an increasing trend with the decreasing ratio of the surface area to the volume; (3) the varying trends of local HTCs along the designated direction were similar among 3 cases and the strongest heat transfer positions were found near pebble-sphere contact points. Such findings will help to design a better pebble bed core.