Westinghouse Electric Company LLC

Michael A LaPresti

Bruce A Howard

John Lojek, Iii

Christopher Nestor

Arnaud Milan

Michael P Skocik

According to various aspects, the present disclosure provides pumps for pumping a liquid metal, systems for filling a container with a liquid metal, and methods for filling a container with a liquid metal. According to at least one aspect, a pump can include an actuator including a drive rod, a first plate, a second plate, guide rods extending between the first plate and the second plate, a traveling stage, and a bellows. The traveling stage can be operatively coupled to the drive rod and can be slidable along the guide rods intermediate the first plate and the second plate. The bellows can extend between the second plate and the traveling stage to define a bellows chamber. The actuator can be configured to slide the traveling stage to expand and contract the bellows to pump the liquid.

Bellows pump for liquid metals

A controlled leakage, hydrostatic, mechanical seal that eliminates sources of contact friction; advantageously locating contact friction forces to be in alignment with the seal face centroid; optimizes the seal face design to achieve maximum hydrostatic film stiffness and minimum sensitivity to radial taper; eliminating unnecessary O-rings and other sources of significant force variation; utilizes a design-for-manufacture approach to design hardware that can be consistently manufactured to precise tolerances; optimizes the double delta channel seal to achieve adequate compression, minimal frictional drag force, and maximum wear resistance; eliminates sources of circumferential waviness such as bolt preload and other non-axisymmetric features; and, thermally isolates components of different materials to mitigate the deformation due to differential thermal expansion.

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Greensburg, PA, United States of America

Michael A LaPresti