Heat Transfer Characteristics of Nitrogen in Supercritical Region Using Redlich-Kwong Equation of State

Abstract

Abstract The present paper studies through numerical methods, the thermodynamic heat transfer characteristics of free convection flow of supercritical nitrogen over a vertical cylinder. In the present analysis, the values of volumetric thermal expansion coefficient ($\beta$) are evaluated based on Redlich-Kwong equation of state (RK-EOS) and Van der Waals equation of state (VW-EOS). The calculated analytical thermal expansion coefficient values using RK-EOS are very close to NIST data values in comparison with VW-EOS. A set of coupled nonlinear partial differential equations (PDEs) governing the supercritical fluid (SCF) flow are derived, converted into non-dimensional form with the help of suitable dimensionless quantities and solved using Crank-Nicolson implicit finite difference method. The simulations are carried out for nitrogen in the supercritical region. The obtained numerical data is expressed in terms of graphs and tables for various values of physical parameters. The increasing value of reduced temperature decreases the average Nusselt number and skin-friction coefficient, whereas amplifying value of reduced pressure enhance the heat transfer rate and wall shear stress in the SCF region. Present results are compared with the previous results and the two are found to be in good agreement, i. e. the numerically generated results found to be in agreement with existing results.