Heat transfer analysis of a pulse-heated microwire in CO2 at supercritical pressures

Abstract

This paper analyzes the characteristics of convective heat transfer of a pulse-heated platinum microwire cooling in CO2 under supercritical pressures based on experimental data. The microwire undergoes a rapid temperature rise of around 664 K within 0.35 ms. An inverse problem is formulated and numerically solved to extract heat transfer data from experimental measurements. In addition, a predictive model for the convective heat transfer coefficient is developed to fully close the equation set. Results are interpreted based on the bulk pressure from 7.38 to 9 MPa and bulk temperature from 295 to 325 K. The convective heat flux of CO2 generally decreases with time, and in the medium-term, the reduction is slightly decelerated owing to buoyancy-driven flows. This demonstrates that high-pressure and low-temperature bulk states generally exert larger convective heat flux to cool the microwire. During the early 10 ms, the time-averaged convective heat flux is of the order of 1 MW/m2, resulting in rapid cooling. This value shows a weak critical enhancement upon crossing the Widom line. During the remaining time, the time-averaged convective heat flux drops to the order of 0.1 MW/m2. Such a drop in heat flux is more obvious in low-bulk-density cases, leading to a relatively long time for sufficient W cooling.