Facilities

The ELSMOR facility was built in 2022 at SIET (Piacenza, Italy) in the frame of the ELSMOR European Project (Grant Agreement number: 847553 — ELSMOR NFRP-2018) to validate a decay heat removal system for the E-SMR. Based on the passive mechanisms of natural circulation, the system aims to dissipate the reactor decay heat to a water pool, using two heat exchangers: a plate-type one coupling the primary side to the secondary side, and a vertical tube one coupling the secondary side to the water pool.

The catalyst sheets (stainless steel coated with washcoat/platinum catalyst material) are arranged in parallel forming vertical rectangular flow channels. Such a set-up represents a box-type recombiner section of AREVA design. Inside of the configuration the distribution of the catalyst temperatures and the gas com- position in vertical flow direction are measured. The correlation of the hydrogen conversion and catalyst temperatures with the experimental parameters serve basically to clarify the interactions of reaction kinetics, heat and mass transfer, and the flow conditions inside the recombiner.

Facility is in operation.