Measurement of supercritical CO2 critical flow: Effects of L/D and surface roughness

The use of supercritical fluids (SCF) has been proposed for advanced power systems including advanced sodium reactors, since these fluids can provide higher thermal efficiency and reduced system component size. Data characterizing the behavior of SCF during a blowdown or rapid depressurization are essential to validate certain aspects of safety analyses. This paper describes the results of an experiment to measure the critical mass flux for numerous stagnation thermodynamic conditions, geometry and outlet tube roughness. It was found that a 1D homogeneous equilibrium model (HEM) was capable of relatively good (less than 10% error) prediction of the test data.