Numerical investigation on heat transfer of supercritical CO<sub>2</sub> in solar receiver tube in high temperature region

Abstract

Supercritical CO<sub>2</sub> can be used as a heat transfer fluid in a solar receiver, especially for a concentrating solar thermal power tower system. Such applications require better understanding of the heat transfer characteristics of supercritical CO<sub>2</sub> in the solar receiver tube in a high temperature region. However, most of the existing experimental and numerical studies of the heat transfer characteristics of supercritical CO<sub>2</sub> in tubes near the critical temperature region, and the corresponding heat transfer characteristics in the high temperature region are conducted. In this paper, a three-dimensional steady-state numerical simulation with the standard <i>k</i>-<i>ε</i> turbulent model is established by using ANSYS FLUENT for the flow and heat transfer of supercritical CO<sub>2</sub> in a heated circular tube with an inner diameter of 6 mm and a length of 500 mm in the high temperature region. The effects of the fluid temperature (823–1023 K), the flow direction (horizontal, downward and upward), the pressure (7.5–9 MPa), the mass flux (200–500 kg·m<sup>–2</sup>·s<sup>–1</sup>) and the heat flux (100–800 kW·m<sup>–2</sup>) on the convection heat transfer coefficient and Nusselt number are discussed. The results show that the convection heat transfer coefficient increases while Nusselt number decreases nearly linearly with fluid temperature increasing. Both fluid direction and pressure have negligible effects on the convection heat transfer coefficient and Nusselt number. Moreover, the convective heat transfer coefficient and Nusselt number are enhanced greatly with the increasing of mass flux and the decreasing of heat flux, which is more obvious at a higher heat flux. The influences of buoyancy and flow acceleration on the heat transfer characteristics are also investigated. The buoyancy effect can be ignored within the present parameter range. However, the flow acceleration induced by the high heat flux significantly deteriorates the heat transfer preformation. Moreover, eight heat transfer correlations of supercritical fluid in tubes are evaluated and compared with the present numerical data. The comparison indicates that the correlations based on the thermal property modification show better performance in the heat transfer prediction in the high temperature region than those based on the dimensionless number modification. And Nusselt number predicted by the best correlation has a mean absolute relative deviation of 8.1% compared with the present numerical results, with all predicted data points located in the deviation bandwidth of ±20%. The present work can provide a theoretical guidance for the optimal design and safe operation of concentrating solar receivers where supercritical CO<sub>2</sub> is used as a heat transfer fluid.