Effects of Various Parameters on Supercritical-Pressure Heat Transfer and Limits for Heat Transfer Correlations Obtained in Vertical Bare Tubes

Author(s):  
Hakim Maloufi ◽  
Hanqing Xie ◽  
Andrew Zopf ◽  
William Anderson ◽  
Christian Langevin ◽  
...  

Currently, there is a number of Generation-IV SuperCritical Water-cooled nuclear-Reactor (SCWR) concepts under development worldwide. These high temperature and pressure reactors will have significantly higher operating parameters compared to those of current water-cooled nuclear-power reactors (i.e., “steam” pressures of about 25 MPa and “steam” outlet temperatures up to 625 °C). Additionally, SCWRs will have a simplified flow circuit in which steam generators, steam dryers, steam separators, etc. will be eliminated, as the steam will be flowing directly to a steam turbine. In support of developing SCWRs studies are being conducted on heat transfer at SuperCritical Pressures (SCPs). Currently, there are very few experimental datasets for heat transfer at SCPs in power-reactor fuel bundles to a coolant (water) available in open literature. Therefore, for preliminary calculations, heat-transfer correlations developed with bare-tube data can be used as a conservative approach. Selected empirical heat-transfer correlations, based on experimentally obtained datasets, have been put forward to calculate Heat Transfer Coefficients (HTCs) in forced convective in various fluids, including water at SCPs. The Mokry et al. correlation (2011) has shown a good fit for experimental data at supercritical conditions within a wide range of operating conditions in Normal and Improved Heat-Transfer (NHT and IHT) regimes. However, it is known that a Deteriorated Heat-Transfer (DHT) regime appears in bare tubes earlier than that in bundle flow geometries. Therefore, it is important to know if bare-tube heat-transfer correlations for SCW can predict HTCs at heat fluxes beyond those defined as starting of DHT regime in bare tubes. The Mokry et al. (2011) correlation fits the best SCW experimental data for HTCs and inner wall temperature for bare tubes at SCPs within the NHT and IHT regimes. However, this correlation might have problems with convergence of iterations at heat fluxes above 1000 kW/m2.

Author(s):  
Amjad Farah ◽  
Krysten King ◽  
Sahil Gupta ◽  
Sarah Mokry ◽  
Wargha Peiman ◽  
...  

This paper presents an extensive study of heat-transfer correlations applicable to supercritical-water flow in vertical bare tubes. A comprehensive dataset was collected from 33 papers by 27 authors, including more than 125 graphs and wide ranges of parameters. The parameters ranges were as follows: pressures 22.5–34.5 MPa, inlet temperatures 85–350°C, mass fluxes 250–3400 kg/m2s, heat fluxes 75–5,400 kW/m2), tube heated lengths 0.6–27.4 m, and tube inside diameters 2–36 mm. This combined dataset was then investigated and analyzed. Heat Transfer Coefficients (HTCs) and wall temperatures were calculated using various existing correlations and compared to the corresponding experimental results. Three correlations were used in this comparison: Bishop et al., Mokry et al. and modified Swenson et al. The main objective of this study was to select the best supercritical-water bare-tube correlation for HTC calculations in: 1) fuel bundles of SuperCritical Water-cooled Reactors (SCWRs) as a preliminary and conservative approach; 2) heat exchangers in case of indirect-cycle SCW Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs); and 3) heat exchangers in case of hydrogen co-generation at SCW NPPs from SCW side. From the beginning, all these three correlations were compared to the Kirillov et al. vertical bare-tube dataset. However, this dataset has a limited range of operating conditions in terms of a pressure (only one pressure value of 24 MPa) and one inside diameter (only 10 mm). Therefore, these correlations were compared with other datasets, which have a much wider range of operating conditions. The comparison showed that in most cases, the Bishop et al. correlation deviates significantly from the experimental data within the pseudocritical region and actually, underestimates the temperature at most times. On the other hand, the Mokry et al. and modified Swenson et al. correlations showed a relatively better fit within the most operating conditions. In general, the modified Swenson et al. correlation showed slightly better fit with the experimental data than other two correlations.


Author(s):  
Nicholas Tarsitano ◽  
Khalil Sidawi ◽  
Igor Pioro

The objective of this paper is to act as a collection of multiple different heat-transfer correlations and to check their accuracy when compared to experimental data obtained in supercritical-pressure refrigerants (R-22 and R-134a). This paper is also intended to collect as much relevant data of heat transfer in supercritical refrigerants as possible for future research. The experimental data have been retrieved from graphs within a wide range of operating parameters. This study is in support of potential use of supercritical refrigerants as modeling fluids instead of supercritical water. The use of refrigerants as modelling fluids instead of water will allow to decrease costs and technical difficulties during experiments at supercritical pressures and widen operating ranges, because the critical parameters of refrigerants are significantly lower than those of water. The research was completed by collecting graphed data from several different experimental series using both R-22 and R-134a data. The advantage of comparing different refrigerants for determining correlation accuracy is to increase the predictability for other potential experiments using refrigerants. All data are taken from bare-tube experiments to produce a relative baseline for heat-transfer characteristics. These experiments have been performed within the following range: Inner tube diameter ranging between 4.4 mm to 13 mm, pressure ranging between 4.3 MPa to 5.5 MPa, and at a number of various mass and heat fluxes. Sixteen potential heat-transfer correlations have been selected and used in this assessment. The correlation by Watts and Chou [1] and Cheng et al. [2] were shown to have the lowest root-mean-square error. Other correlations with the reasonable accuracy include Mokry et al. [3] and Swenson et al. [4] correlations. However, it was decided to develop a new correlation based on these refrigerant data in an attempt to increase the prediction accuracy. Therefore, based on the Mokry et al. [3] correlation a modified correlation was developed, which generalized the experimental Freon data with higher accuracy than the know correlations. This correlation is intended to create a basis for further study on the use of refrigerants as modeling fluids. While Freon has similar properties to water at supercritical conditions, the different molecular properties causes factors to affect each fluid differently. For refrigerants at supercritical conditions, the factors that seem to have the most effect are the dynamic viscosity and density of a fluid.


Author(s):  
Prabu Surendran ◽  
Sahil Gupta ◽  
Tiberiu Preda ◽  
Igor Pioro

This paper presents a thorough analysis of ability of various heat transfer correlations to predict wall temperatures and Heat Transfer Coefficients (HTCs) against experiments on internal forced-convective heat transfer to supercritical carbon dioxide conducted by Koppel [1], He [2], Kim [3] and Bae [4]. It should be noted the Koppel dataset was taken from a paper which used the Koppel data but was not written by Koppel. All experiments were completed in bare tubes with diameters from 0.948 mm to 9 mm for horizontal and vertical configurations. The datasets contain a total of 1573 wall temperature points with pressures ranging from 7.58 to 9.59 MPa, mass fluxes of 400 to 1641 kg/m2s and heat fluxes from 20 to 225 kW/m2. The main objective of the study was to compare several correlations and select the best of them in predicting HTC and wall temperature values for supercritical carbon dioxide. This study will be beneficial for analyzing heat exchangers involving supercritical carbon dioxide, and for verifying scaling parameters between CO2 and other fluids. In addition, supercritical carbon dioxide’s use as a modeling fluid is necessary as the costs of experiments are lower than supercritical water. The datasets were compiled and calculations were performed to find HTCs and wall and bulk-fluid temperatures using existing correlations. Calculated results were compared with the experimental ones. The correlations used were Mokry et al. [5], Swenson et al. [6] and a set of new correlations presented in Gutpa et al. [7]. Statistical error calculations were performed are presented in the paper.


Author(s):  
Sahil Gupta ◽  
Eugene Saltanov ◽  
Igor Pioro

Canada among many other countries is in pursuit of developing next generation (Generation IV) nuclear-reactor concepts. One of the main objectives of Generation-IV concepts is to achieve high thermal efficiencies (45–50%). It has been proposed to make use of SuperCritical Fluids (SCFs) as the heat-transfer medium in such Gen IV reactor design concepts such as SuperCritical Water-cooled Reactor (SCWR). An important aspect towards development of SCF applications in novel Gen IV Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) designs is to understand the thermodynamic behavior and prediction of Heat Transfer Coefficients (HTCs) at supercritical (SC) conditions. To calculate forced convection HTCs for simple geometries, a number of empirical 1-D correlations have been proposed using dimensional analysis. These 1-D HTC correlations are developed by applying data-fitting techniques to a model equation with dimensionless terms and can be used for rudimentary calculations. Using similar statistical techniques three correlations were proposed by Gupta et al. [1] for Heat Transfer (HT) in SCCO2. These SCCO2 correlations were developed at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (Canada) by using a large set of experimental SCCO2 data (∼4,000 data-points) obtained at the Chalk River Laboratories (CRL) AECL. These correlations predict HTC values with an accuracy of ±30% and wall temperatures with an accuracy of ±20% for the analyzed dataset. Since these correlations were developed using data from a single source - CRL (AECL), they can be limited in their range of applicability. To investigate the tangible applicability of these SCCO2 correlations it was imperative to perform a thorough error analysis by checking their results against a set of independent SCCO2 tube data. In this paper SCCO2 data are compiled from various sources and within various experimental flow conditions. HTC and wall-temperature values for these data points are calculated using updated correlations presented in [1] and compared to the experimental values. Error analysis is then shown for these datasets to obtain a sense of the applicability of these updated SCCO2 correlations.


Author(s):  
Andreas Jeromin ◽  
Christian Eichler ◽  
Berthold Noll ◽  
Manfred Aigner

Numerical predictions of conjugate heat transfer on an effusion cooled flat plate were performed and compared to detailed experimental data. The commercial package CFX® is used as flow solver. The effusion holes in the referenced experiment had an inclination angle of 17 degrees and were distributed in a staggered array of 7 rows. The geometry and boundary conditions in the experiments were derived from modern gas turbine combustors. The computational domain contains a plenum chamber for coolant supply, a solid wall and the main flow duct. Conjugate heat transfer conditions are applied in order to couple the heat fluxes between the fluid region and the solid wall. The fluid domain contains 2.4 million nodes, the solid domain 300,000 nodes. Turbulence modeling is provided by the SST turbulence model which allows the resolution of the laminar sublayer without wall functions. The numerical predictions of velocity and temperature distributions at certain locations show significant differences to the experimental data in velocity and temperature profiles. It is assumed that this behavior is due to inappropriate modeling of turbulence especially in the effusion hole. Nonetheless, the numerically predicted heat transfer coefficients are in good agreement with the experimental data at low blowing ratios.


Author(s):  
Jessica Sheehan ◽  
Avram Bar-Cohen

Heat transfer to an evaporating refrigerant and/or dielectric liquid in a microgap channel can provide very high heat transfer coefficients and volumetric cooling rates. Recent studies at Maryland have established the dominance of the annular flow regime in such microgap channels and related the observed high-quality peak of an M-shaped heat transfer coefficient curve to the onset of local dryout. The present study utilizes infrared thermography to locate such nascent dryout regions and operating conditions. Data obtained with a 210 micron microgap channel, operated with a mass flux of 195.2 kg/m2-s and heat fluxes of 10.3 to 26 W/cm2 are presented and discussed.


2005 ◽  
Vol 127 (8) ◽  
pp. 897-902 ◽  
Author(s):  
Majid Bazargan ◽  
Daniel Fraser ◽  
Vijay Chatoorgan

Heat transfer to supercritical water and buoyancy∕natural convection effects are becoming increasingly important areas of research due to current trends in nuclear reactor design and supercritical water oxidation facilities. A pilot-scale supercritical water oxidation loop was constructed at the University of British Columbia. For this work, the facility was used to study the relative importance of buoyancy effects on supercritical water flowing in a horizontal pipe. Local heat transfer coefficients at the top and bottom surfaces of the horizontal test section were systematically measured over a wide range of conditions at supercritical pressures between 23 to 27 MPa, uniform heat fluxes were up to 310kW∕m2, and the mass flux ranged from 330 to 1230kg∕m2s. It was found that neglecting buoyancy effects could cause large discrepancies between the predictions of available empirical correlations and the experimental data. The data was used to assess available criteria for the buoyancy-free region during horizontal supercritical fluid flows. The criterion of Petukhov and Polyakov, which, for the range of parameters in this study, was found to be accurate in predicting the onset of buoyancy effects. The experimental investigation is confined to supercritical flows with heat addition only. Hence, no heat loss conditions at supercritical temperatures were investigated.


1983 ◽  
Vol 105 (3) ◽  
pp. 605-610 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. M. Robertson ◽  
P. C. Lovegrove

The results of laboratory experiments with Freon 11 (R11) flowing in an electrically heated, serrated-fin test section to measure local boiling coefficients over a wide range of vapor quality, with mass fluxes up to 150 kg/m2 s, heat fluxes to 4 kW/m2, and pressure from 3–7 bar, are reported. These low mass and heat fluxes reflect the industrial process application of these heat exchangers where exceedingly small temperature differences may exist between streams. Results are compared with the very similar boiling characteristics previously reported elsewhere for the same test section, with liquid nitrogen as a test fluid under comparable flow conditions. A simple method using the Reynolds number of the total flow regarded as a liquid has been used to correlate boiling heat transfer coefficients with quality for both fluids. The use of a liquid-film flow model to produce a nondimensional correlation connecting the Nusselt, Reynolds, and Prandtl numbers of the film is discussed.


Author(s):  
Weiqiang Zhang ◽  
Huixiong Li ◽  
Qing Zhang ◽  
Yifang Zhang ◽  
Tai Wang

The investigation on the heat transfer characteristics for supercritical pressure water (SCW) is of value for the development of the supercritical water-cooled nuclear reactor (SCWR). As an important heat transfer enhancement element, heat transfer for SCW in internally-ribbed tubes was still not solved, though lots of experimental studies have been published and a great many heat transfer correlations were proposed. This paper presented an analysis of heat transfer in the internally-ribbed tubes, through comparing heat transfer correlations for SCW gained from different internally-ribbed tubes under the same operating condition. It was found that all existing heat transfer correlations reported could not been well applied for various internally-ribbed tubes with large deviation between prediction results and experimental values, because rib geometry had a great influence on heat transfer of internally-ribbed tubes. On the basis of experimental data collected from open literature for internally-ribbed tubes, a new general calculation correlation of heat transfer coefficient for SCW was developed for various internally-ribbed tubes by combining an optimized empirical correlation for vertically-upward smooth tubes and four dimensionless numbers of rib geometry. The results show that the calculated values of the new present correlation is in reasonable agreement with available experimental data collected. Moreover, the new correlation was verified well by experiment data of two new-type internally-ribbed tubes performed beyond the above experimental database.


2000 ◽  
Vol 124 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Willenborg ◽  
V. Schramm ◽  
S. Kim ◽  
S. Wittig

The influence of a honeycomb facing on the heat transfer of a stepped labyrinth seal with geometry typical for modern jet engines was investigated. Heat transfer measurements were obtained for both a smooth stator and a stator lined with a honeycomb structure. In addition, an LDV system was used with the scaled up geometry to obtain a high local resolution of the velocity distribution in the seal. The experiments covered a wide range of pressure ratios and gap widths, typical for engine operating conditions. Local heat transfer coefficients were calculated from the measured wall and gas temperatures using a finite element code. By averaging the local values, mean heat transfer coefficients were determined and correlations for the global Nusselt numbers were derived for the stator and the rotor. The LDV results showed strong geometrical effects of the honeycomb structure on the development of the flow fields for the honeycomb seal. The distribution of the local heat transfer coefficients are compatible with the flow features identified by the LDV results and reveal a significantly reduced heat transfer with the honeycomb facing compared to the smooth facing.


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