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Numerical Analysis of Heat Transfer Characteristics to Supercritical CO2 in a Vertical Mini-Channel: Transition and Pseudo-Boiling

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Abstract

Large eddy simulations have been conducted to study upward transitional flows and heat transfer characteristics of supercritical CO2 in a vertical mini-channel. The numerical simulation was carried out on a modified buoyantPimpleFOAM solver in OpenFOAM 7, and was verified using experiment data. Numerical results indicate that increasing the Grashof numbers can reduce the flow stability and make the flow transition earlier. There are four stages of heat transfer in the transition process, i.e., weakened, improved, recovered and normal heat transfer. These heat transfer phenomena in the transition process were explained from three perspectives: thermal boundary layer theory, turbulent transport and pseudo-boiling theory. Heat transfer enhancement during transition is related to the transport of supercritical molecular clusters, and these molecular clusters are regarded as pseudo-bubbles in pseudo-boiling theory. The flow pattern of the pseudo-phases in the dia-Widom process contains single-phase flow, steady pseudo-film flow, unsteady pseudo-film flow, partial pseudo-bubbles flow and flocculent pseudo-film flow. Pseudo-bubbles have similar behaviors to subcritical bubbles, i.e., break-up, deformation, condensation and coalescence. Relevant researches in this work are favorable for understanding the heat transfer mechanism of supercritical fluids during flow transition.

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Abbreviations

c p :

constant-pressure heat capacity

Co :

Courant number

C k,C e :

turbulence constants

d :

bore diameter of tube

g :

gravitational acceleration vector

Gr :

Grashof number

H :

width of channel

h :

specific enthalpy

hf :

heat transfer coefficient

K :

turbulent kinetic energy

L :

length of channel

m :

mass flow rate

Nu :

Nusselt number

p :

pressure

Pr :

Prandtl number

q w :

surface heat flux

Re :

Reynolds number

T :

temperature

t :

time

Tu :

turbulence intensity

U :

velocity vector

u,v :

velocity component

x,y,z :

spatial coordinates

β :

thermal expansivity

δ :

thickness of pseudo-film

ε :

turbulent dissipation rate

λ :

thermal conductivity

μ :

viscosity

ρ :

density

τ :

stress tensor

0:

inlet parameter

b:

bulk average parameter

res:

resolved parameter

SGS:

sub-grid scale parameter

x :

local parameter

w:

wall parameter

DNS:

direct numerical simulation

GL:

gas-like

LES:

large eddy simulation

LL:

liquid-like

PB:

pseudo-bubble

PF:

pseudo-film

SM:

supercritical mesophase

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Acknowledgements

The scientific calculations in this paper have been done on the HPC Cloud Platform of Shandong University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Energy and Power Engineering, Shandong University, Ji’nan, 250061, China

    Baoqiang Yuan, Wei Wang, Gongming Xin & Wenjing Du

Authors
  1. Baoqiang Yuan
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  2. Wei Wang
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Correspondence to Wenjing Du.

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Yuan, B., Wang, W., Xin, G. et al. Numerical Analysis of Heat Transfer Characteristics to Supercritical CO2 in a Vertical Mini-Channel: Transition and Pseudo-Boiling. J. Therm. Sci. 33, 101–113 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11630-023-1897-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11630-023-1897-5

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