Experimental study on heat transfer characteristics of supercritical carbon dioxide natural circulation

An experimental study has been conducted to investigate the heat transfer characteristics of supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) uniformly heated in the horizontal circular smooth tube. The results illustrated that there was a significant difference in heat transfer between the top wall and bottom wall due to the buoyancy. Bulk flow acceleration cannot be negligible in the high heat flux region, which leads to heat transfer deterioration. A new heat transfer correlation is proposed, in which the buoyancy parameter and bulk flow acceleration have been taken into account. The new correlation and six classic correlations for sCO2 are examined in horizontal tubes. The comparison indicates that the new correlation has a better performance for sCO2 flowing through a horizontal heating tube under natural circulation conditions. For example, 94.9% of the calculated results using the new heat transfer correlation were within ±30% of the experimental results while only 87.9% of that using the Jackson correlation (the best of the six) were within the same error bands.