Innovative Design and Implementation of Jet Cooling of Large UPS Powered Systems in Nuclear Power Plant

• Published in: IEEE transactions on industrial electronics (1982) 2021-05, Vol.68 (5), p.3813-3819
• Main Authors: Kudiyarasan, S., Sivakumar, P., Balachandran, K.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Aerodynamics; Air flow; Computational fluid dynamics; Cooling; Cooling systems; Fans; Fluid flow; Heat; Heat exchange; Heating systems; High temperature; jet cooling; Nuclear energy; Nuclear power plants; Operating temperature; optimizing; Power transformer insulation; Streamlining; temperature measurement; transformer winding; uninterrupted power supply (UPS); Uninterruptible power supplies; Uninterruptible power systems; Windings
• ISSN: 0278-0046; 1557-9948
• DOI: 10.1109/TIE.2020.2985005

In this article, it is imperative that an efficient and reliable cooling system is used for the large Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) panel in Nuclear Power Plant. While the UPS system can tolerate relatively high temperatures, it is advisable to keep the temperature at 25 °C or below in the room where the UPS is housed. A rule of thumb is that for every 10 °C increase in operating temperature, the expected life of the UPS components would be reduced in half. So it is absolutely necessary to maintain the temperature within the limits prescribed by the designer. The aim of this article is to devise a vastly improved cooling system by streamlining the cool air flow and targeting the hotspots of the UPS components which are particularly vulnerable to damage from high temperature. First, a computational model of the whole setup was made and then, computational fluid dynamics (fluent) technique was used to perform fluid flow and heat transfer analysis of this setup, which showed a dramatic performance increase in the heat exchange process and reduced the effective size of the UPS cabin and cost.