Measurements of convective heat transfer to vertical upward flows of CO₂ in circular tubes at near-critical and supercritical pressures

Highlights: • We present and discuss results of thermal–hydraulic measurements in CO₂ for the near critical and supercritical pressure region. • We report the full heat transfer and pressure drop database. - Abstract: An extensive experimental program of heat transfer measurements has been completed recently at the University of Ottawa's supercritical pressure test facility (SCUOL). Thermal–hydraulics tests were performed for vertical upflow of carbon dioxide in directly heated tubes with inner diameters of 8 and 22 mm, at high subcritical, near-critical and supercritical pressures. The test conditions, when converted to water-equivalent values, correspond to conditions of interest to current Super-Critical Water-Cooled Reactor designs, and include many measurements under conditions for which few data are available in the literature. These data significantly complement the existing experimental database and are being used for the derivation and validation of a new heat transfer prediction method in progress at the University of Ottawa. The same data are also suitable for the assessment of the accuracy of other heat transfer prediction methods and fluid-to-fluid scaling laws for near-critical and supercritical pressures. In addition, they permit further examination of previously suggested relationships describing the critical heat flux and post-dryout heat transfer coefficient at high subcritical pressures and the boundaries of the deteriorated/enhanced heat transfer regions for near-critical and supercritical pressures. The measurements reported in this paper cover several subcritical heat transfer modes, including single phase liquid heat transfer, nucleate boiling, critical heat flux, post-dryout heat transfer and superheated vapor heat transfer; they also cover several supercritical heat transfer modes, including heat transfer to liquid-like supercritical fluid and heat transfer to vapor-like supercritical fluid, which occurred in the downstream sections of the tubes. The collected data were reduced and compiled. The reported heat transfer database consists of more than 17,000 data points in the 8 and 22 mm tubes, along with pressure drop data for the 8 mm tube. The tables of heat transfer and pressure drop data are provided as separate files in electronic format. The results are presented in plots of wall temperature and heat transfer coefficient vs. bulk fluid enthalpy. The parametric trends of diameter, mass flux, pressure and heat flux on these wall temperature and heat transfer coefficient profiles have been plotted and discussed. The present supercritical heat transfer measurements are in good agreement with corresponding results reported by other investigators