Heat transfer and pressure drop of supercritical carbon dioxide flowing in several printed circuit heat exchanger channel patterns

Conference · Sun Jul 01 00:00:00 EDT 2012

OSTI ID:22107857

Carlson, M. ^[1]; Kruizenga, A. ^[2]; Anderson, M.; Corradini, M. ^[1]

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1. Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 839 Engineering Research Building, 1500 Engineering Drive, Madison, WI 53706 (United States)
2. Sandia National Laboratory (United States)

Closed-loop Brayton cycles using supercritical carbon dioxide (SCO{sub 2}) show potential for use in high-temperature power generation applications including High Temperature Gas Reactors (HTGR) and Sodium-Cooled Fast Reactors (SFR). Compared to Rankine cycles SCO{sub 2} Brayton cycles offer similar or improved efficiency and the potential for decreased capital costs due to a reduction in equipment size and complexity. Compact printed-circuit heat exchangers (PCHE) are being considered as part of several SCO{sub 2} Brayton designs to further reduce equipment size with increased energy density. Several designs plan to use a gas cooler operating near the pseudo-critical point of carbon dioxide to benefit from large variations in thermophysical properties, but further work is needed to validate correlations for heat transfer and pressure-drop characteristics of SCO{sub 2} flows in candidate PCHE channel designs for a variety of operating conditions. This paper presents work on experimental measurements of the heat transfer and pressure drop behavior of miniature channels using carbon dioxide at supercritical pressure. Results from several plate geometries tested in horizontal cooling-mode flow are presented, including a straight semi-circular channel, zigzag channel with a bend angle of 80 degrees, and a channel with a staggered array of extruded airfoil pillars modeled after a NACA 0020 airfoil with an 8.1 mm chord length facing into the flow. Heat transfer coefficients and bulk temperatures are calculated from measured local wall temperatures and local heat fluxes. The experimental results are compared to several methods for estimating the friction factor and Nusselt number of cooling-mode flows at supercritical pressures in millimeter-scale channels. (authors)

• Research Organization: American Nuclear Society, 555 North Kensington Avenue, La Grange Park, IL 60526 (United States)
• OSTI ID: 22107857
• Resource Relation: Conference: ICAPP '12: 2012 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants, Chicago, IL (United States), 24-28 Jun 2012; Other Information: Country of input: France; 11 refs.; Related Information: In: Proceedings of the 2012 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants - ICAPP '12| 2799 p.
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

42 ENGINEERING
22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS
BRAYTON CYCLE
CAPITALIZED COST
CARBON DIOXIDE
COOLING
DESIGN
ENERGY DENSITY
FRICTION FACTOR
HEAT EXCHANGERS
HEAT FLUX
HEAT TRANSFER
HTGR TYPE REACTORS
NUSSELT NUMBER
PRESSURE DROP
PRINTED CIRCUITS
RANKINE CYCLE
SODIUM COOLED REACTORS
THERMODYNAMIC PROPERTIES
TURBULENT FLOW