Novel Solutions for High Temperature Plant

FESI is pleased to announce that a workshop designed to review and explore options to meet the future operational challenges for high temperature plant is to be held on January 23, 2020 in Room 1.15 in Queen’s Building, University of Bristol (please see map).

Future designs for nuclear, solar, and fossil-fuel power generation plant propose the use of supercritical steam cycles with temperatures and pressures as high as 750°C and 350 bar. These high temperature and pressures will demand the development of novel materials and engineering designs to achieve a long operating life of the order of 60 years. It is not clear that current developments will provide solutions in the near-term.

This workshop will explore the current state of materials and engineering research to assess the likelihood of successful design and construction of high temperature plant and the remaining research and development. The workshop will address the two linked approaches of improvements to properties of materials and new engineering design techniques.

Current thinking is that high operating temperatures will require the use of nickel-based alloys for components in superheaters, reheaters and steam transfer pipes, due to their better resistance to creep damage and steam oxidation. However, Nickel alloys are more costly than steels and could be in relatively scarce supply, considering the quantity required for new power plants worldwide. Alternative materials including new steel alloys may need to be developed to reduce the dependency on nickel-based alloys.

Although it is perhaps inevitable that materials able to operate at high temperatures will be required for some components of the plant, new engineering design approaches may allow the use of less exotic material elsewhere. A novel approach being explored in the UK is that steam transfer pipes could be manufactured with internal ceramic insulation and external cooling to reduce the temperature the pipes are exposed to and alleviate the requirement for more expensive high temperature materials. Recent Japanese proposals for nuclear reactors include a counter-cooled pipe exchanging high temperature helium coolant between the nuclear reactor and steam generator.

Amongst those who are scheduled to speak at the workshop are:

Peter Flewitt
Professor in the School of Physics at the University of Bristol, formerly a senior technical manager with Magnox North Limited. His work focuses on materials, engineering and structural integrity, supporting continued safe operation of nuclear and conventional power plants. He is a director of FESI and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Andy Morris
Chief Mechanical Engineer at EDF Energy Coal, Gas and Renewables and a visiting Professor at Imperial College. He is actively involved in research covering ageing materials and condition assessment under service conditions, which supports his role providing technical oversight and governance for the operating assets. Prior to many years involved in conventional generation and renewables, he also worked on naval nuclear PWR reactor core integrity for several years.

Bo Chen
Professor of Engineering Materials, University of Leicester. Bo worked for more than 10 years in the field of high-temperature structural materials performance and has specialised in advanced manufacturing, microstructural characterisation as well as creep and fatigue related lifetime prediction.

Grace Burke
Professor in the Department of Materials and the Director of the Materials Performance Centre at the University of Manchester. Before joining the University, she had a 30 year career in the US nuclear industry with research positions at the Westinghouse Science and Technology Center and the Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory.

George Smith
Emeritus Professor in the Department of Materials at the University of Oxford. He has worked for a number of years on nuclear materials and has interests in both nuclear fission and fusion. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society.