Prognostics for Light Water Reactor Sustainability: Empirical Methods for Heat Exchanger Prognostic Lifetime Predictions

As the licenses of many nuclear power plants in the US and abroad are being extended, the accurate knowledge of system and component condition is becoming more important. The US Department of Energy (DOE) has funded a project with the primary goal of developing lifecycle prognostic methods that generate accurate and continuous remaining useful life (RUL) estimates as components transition through each stage of the component lifecycle. These stages correspond to beginning of life, operations at various expected and observed stress levels, the onset of detectable degradation, and degradation towards the eventual end of life. This paper provides an overview and application of a developed lifecycle prognostic approach and applies it to a heat exchanger fouling test bed under accelerated degradation conditions. The results of applying the lifecycle prognostic algorithms to the heat exchanger fouling experiment are given, followed by a discussion of the strengths and shortcomings of the developed techniques for this application.