Heat transfer to supercritical pressure carbon dioxide flowing upward through tubes and a narrow annulus passage

A heat transfer test facility, SPHINX, which uses carbon dioxide as a medium at supercritical pressures, has been built at KAERI. A series of experiments are under way for various geometries including tubes of several diameters and narrow annulus passages of a concentric and eccentric layout. The experiments aim to collect heat transfer data and to provide an empirical heat transfer correlation required for a SCWR design. In this paper the test results for tubes of 4.4 mm and 9.0 mm IDs, and a concentric annular passage (ϕ8 mm × ϕ10 mm × L1800 mm) are presented for certain combinations of the heat fluxes and mass fluxes. The heat transfer coefficients produced in the tests were compared with those from the existing heat transfer correlations with different media. A new correlation was introduced for the experiment data presented in this paper.