Fluid-to-fluid scaling of heat transfer in circular tubes cooled with supercritical fluids

Experimental investigations of heat transfer at prototypical conditions of supercritical water cooled reactors (SCWRs) are strongly limited due to their huge technical and financial efforts required. One of the possible solutions is the application of model fluids, which have much lower critical pressure and critical temperature. Model fluid technique has been widely applied in the thermal-hydraulic studies of nuclear engineering. In spite of growing activities of heat transfer at supercritical conditions using model fluids, there does still not exist any reliable fluid-to-fluid scaling methods, to transfer the test data in model fluids directly to the conditions of prototype fluid. This paper presents a fluid-to-fluid scaling method for heat transfer in circular tubes cooled with supercritical fluids. Based on conservation equations and boundary conditions, one set of dimensionless numbers and the requirements of a complete scaling are determined. Scaling of pressure and temperature ensures the similarity of thermo-physical properties of various fluids. A new dimensionless number, presenting the product of the so-called pseudo Boiling number, Reynolds number and Prandtl number, is applied to scale heat flux. The distortion approach is used to scale mass flux. The scaling of heat transfer coefficient is based on Nusselt number. In addition, a new approach is introduced to validate the scaling law. The validation results show good feasibility and reasonable accuracy of the proposed scaling law. Assessment of scaling factors of various parameters indicates the high feasibility of Freon-134a as model fluid for SC water. Some guidelines can be derived for the future experimental investigations on heat transfer at supercritical pressures using model fluid techniques.

Research highlights▶ Propose a semi-empirical methodology for fluid-to-fluid scaling. ▶ Derive main dimensionless numbers for fluid-to-fluid scaling. ▶ Develop a new scaling model for heat transfer in supercritical fluids. ▶ Propose guidelines for selecting stimulant fluids.