Also available on Youtube.
About This Webinar
Presented by Keshav Ramchandran of CPFD at the 2026 Barracuda Virtual Reactor Users’ Conference.
TRI-structural ISOtropic (TRISO) fuel particles are a key enabling technology for advanced high-temperature gas-cooled reactors and microreactors, offering exceptional fuel integrity, high burnup, and inherent safety. Their production relies on complex gas-solid flow, heat transfer, and chemical vapor deposition processes within spouted-bed reactors, where hydrodynamics and reaction kinetics directly influence coating quality and process efficiency. This presentation introduces a Barracuda Virtual Reactor application model for simulating the production of TRISO particles, combining multiphase flow with detailed gas-phase and surface reaction chemistry to predict particle growth and deposition behavior. Model validation against experimental data is presented, along with analysis of particle growth rates, particle size distribution evolution, and entrainment as coating progresses. The results demonstrate how high-fidelity simulation can provide insights into reactor performance that are difficult to obtain experimentally, enabling optimization of operating conditions, coating uniformity, and process scale-up while reducing development time and cost.
About the Speaker
Keshav is a CFD Engineer at CPFD Software, joining in June 2025. He has worked on developing application models for a variety of energy industry processes and has worked with customers on commercial projects. Keshav received his Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from Texas A&M University.