Long Duration Hot Hydrogen Exposure of Nuclear Thermal Rocket Materials

An arc-heater driven hyper-thermal convective environments simulator was recently developed and commissioned for long duration hot hydrogen exposure of nuclear thermal rocket materials. This newly established non-nuclear testing capability uses a high-power, multi-gas, wall-stabilized constricted arc-heater to .produce high-temperature pressurized hydrogen flows representative of nuclear reactor core environments, excepting radiation effects, and is intended to serve as a low cost test facility for the purpose of investigating and characterizing candidate fuel/structural materials and improving associated processing/fabrication techniques. Design and engineering development efforts are fully summarized, and facility operating characteristics are reported as determined from a series of baseline performance mapping runs and long duration capability demonstration tests

Design of the Psychrometric Chamber of a Room Air Conditioner Test Facility

This report summarizes the process of designing the calorimeter chamber of a test facility for assessing the steady-state energy efficiency of room air conditioners. The calorimeter has been designed to produce accurate measurements of the cooling and dehumidifying abilities of room air conditioners rated between 0.5 and 2.5 tons of refrigeration. By designing the system to provide the air conditioners with a wide range of indoor psychrometric conditions, a rich data set can be obtained which will be used for determining the effects of alternative refrigerants and associated design changes on system performance. Operating characteristics of the chamber have been identified and documented. Chamber performance data have quantified the parasitic steady-state heat and moisture losses which must be known in order to acquire accurate performance data. Transient testing of the facility has yielded the response characteristics of the system which are useful for optimal facility operation.Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Center Project 2

Study of fuel cell powerplant with heat recovery

It was shown that heat can be recovered from fuel cell power plants by replacing the air-cooled heat exchangers in present designs with units which transfer the heat to the integrated utility system. Energy availability for a 40-kW power plant was studied and showed that the total usable energy at rated power represents 84 percent of the fuel lower heating value. The effects of design variables on heat availability proved to be small. Design requirements were established for the heat recovery heat exchangers, including measurement of the characteristics of two candidate fuel cell coolants after exposure to fuel cell operating conditions. A heat exchanger test program was defined to assess fouling and other characteristics of fuel cell heat exchangers needed to confirm heat exchanger designs for heat recovery