Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow Characteristics in Supercritical Pressure Water

Abstract

A series of integral heat transfer measurements in a square annular flow passage was performed for bulk water temperatures of 175–400°C with upward mass velocities of 300 kg/m2 s and 1000 kg/m2 s and heat fluxes of 0, 200 kW/m2, and 440 kW/m2, all at a pressure of 25 MPa. Mean and turbulent velocities measured with a two-component laser Doppler velocimetry system along with simulations using the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code FLUENT were used to explain the deterioration and enhancement of heat transfer in supercritical pressure water. At low mass velocities, the integral heat transfer measurements exhibited large localized wall temperature spikes that could not be accurately predicted with Nusselt correlations. Detailed mean and turbulent velocities along with FLUENT simulations show that buoyancy effects cause a significant reduction in turbulent quantities at a radial location similar to what is the law of the wall region for isothermal flow. At bulk temperatures near the pseudocritical temperature, high mass velocity integral heat transfer measurements exhibited an enhanced heat transfer with a magnitude dependent on the applied heat flux. Measured mean and turbulent velocities showed no noticeable changes under these conditions. FLUENT simulations show that the integrated effects of specific heat can be used to explain the observed effects. The experimentally measured heat transfer and local velocity data also serve as a database to compare existing CFD models, such as Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations and possibly even large Eddy simulations (LES) and direct numerical simulations (DNS). Ultimately, these measurements will aid in the development of models that can accurately predict heat transfer to supercritical pressure water.