Supercritical water heat transfer for nuclear reactor applications: A review

• Surveyed literature on heat transfer of supercritical water aiming for the core design of SCWRs.
• The experimental and numerical studies are analyzed in depth and the correlations are summarized.
• The simulations and experimental investigations are very limited to general/simple geometry, mostly circular tubes.
• Investigations in complex geometry which is more similar to the real situation in SCWRs are very limited.
• Additional research is required in the heat transfer of supercritical water under SCWRs operating conditions.

Understanding of the heat transfer characteristics of supercritical water is one of the most important issues in Supercritical Water-Cooled Reactors (SCWRs) development. The main objective of the present study is to perform literature survey on the supercritical water heat transfer researches in order to provide the references for the SCWR researchers. Both the experimental and numerical studies related to the supercritical water heat transfer, especially for nuclear reactor applications, are reviewed. It is found that the majority researches are focusing on the supercritical water flow inside circular tubes in which first order closure models assuming isotropic behavior of turbulence are being used. However, for flow channels with different geometries such as sub-channel of fuel assembly, anisotropic behavior of turbulence and secondary flows are observed. Therefore, additional researches are needed for supercritical water heat transfer under SCWR operating conditions.