Experimental investigation of the supercritical heat transfer of the low GWP refrigerant R1234ze(E): calibration and validation of test rig

Abstract

Heat transfer of supercritical refrigerants is applied in practical systems such as the transcritical organic Rankine cycle or supercritical heat pump. The concept of supercritical heat transfer is not new and has already been studied and applied for decades in several applications. However, results on one fluid cannot be directly translated to another one. This is because the thermohydraulic behavior of fluids is heavily influenced in the near-supercritical region due to sudden variations in the thermophysical properties when the fluid is heated or cooled close to its critical point. For refrigerants under horizontal flow, the research is limited. Most studies in literature are on small diameter tubes and on R134a, which has a high global warming potential. Therefore, an experimental test rig has been built to measure the supercritical heat transfer of low global warming potential refrigerants over a large temperature and pressure range in the supercritical region. In this work, the calibration and validation of this test rig is presented using the refrigerant R1234ze(E). The test section consists of a 4 m long horizontal tube with an inner diameter of 22.9 mm, equipped with thermocouples at both the tube wall and in the bulk of the flow, and is heated by resistance wires wrapped around the tube. For the calibration, the temperature profiles under both non-heating and heating conditions are evaluated. For the validation, the average Nusselt numbers obtained through experiments under subcritical conditions are compared to the average Nusselt numbers calculated based on the Dittus-Boelter and Gnielinski correlation.