Experimental study on the effect of wall roughness on heat transfer characteristics of supercritical carbon dioxide in vertical tubes

Abstract

The heat transfer characteristics of supercritical carbon dioxide(S-CO2) are vital for S-CO2 power cycles. Previous studies primarily focused on the heat transfer of S-CO2 in smooth or ribbed tubes. Rough walls can affect the heat transfer in turbulent flows. Whereas roughness effects on S-CO2 heat transfer have rarely been studied. The heat transfer characteristics of S-CO2 in tubes (d=4.57 mm,16207≤Re≤91735) with various roughness (1.5 μm∼40 μm) are investigated experimentally in this study. The results reveal that rough wall helps alleviate heat transfer deterioration, which is embodied in: the critical heat load(q/G) for heat transfer deterioration increases from 0.11 kJ/kg to 0.17 kJ/kg as roughness increases. Heat transfer deteriorates in all tubes under high q/G, the temperature peak and deterioration length drop from 106.9 °C to 73.7 °C and 0.75 m to 0.25 m as roughness increases. No heat transfer deterioration in various tubes under low q/G, the heat transfer coefficient practically triples with increasing roughness. The effect of operation parameters on heat transfer performance of S-CO2 in various tubes is similar. A heat transfer correlation for rough tubes is proposed based on 5460 experimental data, which catches 90% of experimental data within ±20% error.