Prediction of a heat transfer to CO2 flowing in an upward path at a supercritical pressure

Abstract

This study was performed to evaluate the prediction capability of a commercial CFD code and to investigate the effects of different geometries such as a 4.4 mm tube and an 8/10 mm annular channel on the detailed flow structures. A numerical simulation was performed for the conditions, at which the experimental data was produced by the test facility SPHINX. A 2-dimensional axisymmetric steady flow was assumed for computational simplicity. The RNG κ-ε turbulence model (RNG) with an enhanced wall treatment option, SST κ-ε (SST) and low Reynolds Abid turbulence model (ABD) were employed and the numerical predictions were compared with the experimental data generated from the experiment. The effects of the geometry on heat transfer were investigated. The flow and temperature fields were also examined in order to investigate the mechanism of heat transfer near the wall. The local heat transfer coefficient predicted by the RNG model is very close to the measurement result for the tube. In contrast, the local heat transfer coefficient predicted by the SST and ABD models is closer to the measurement for the annular channel.