Proceedings of ICONE 8

8th International Conference on Nuclear Engineering

April 2-6, 2000, Baltimore, MD USA

ICONE-8778
VISUALIZATION OF FORCED CONVECTION HEAT TRANSFER FOR CARBON DIOXIDE IN
SUPERCRITICAL CONDITION

K. SAKURAI, H. S. KO, K. OKAMOTO, and H. MADARAME

Nuclear Engineering Research Laboratory
University of Tokyo
Tokai-mura, Ibaraki, 319-11
JAPAN
tel: +81-29-287-8413
fax: +81-29-287-8488
e-mail: katsumi@tokai.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Keywords: supercritical, carbon dioxide, visualization, boiling-like phenomenon

transfer coecient near the critical point decrease when

the heat ux is considerably high, with extension of the
theory of the turbulent convection heat transfer. Boilinglike phenomenon was presumed to be one of factor of the
heat transfer deterioration.

ABSTRACT
Carbon dioxide uid at supercritical pressure has been
illuminated by a white light for visualization to evaluate
the heat transfer phenomena in forced convection ows.
One of reason for heat transfer deterioration of supercritical uid was considered as boiling-like phenomenon because supercritical uid seemed to generate bubbles like
boiling around the wall in some cases of pressure, ow rate
and heat load. The theoretical analysis of the boiling-like
phenomenon has been conrmed by the ow visualization
in this study. The visualized images showed the boiling
eect near the wall and veried the relationship between
the boiling-like phenomenon and the heat transfer performance.

Koshizuka et al .[6] performed a numerical analysis that

agreed well with experimental data. They classied the
mechanisms of heat transfer deterioration phenomena of
supercritical water in a circular tube about ow rates. They
found that viscosity increases locally near the heated wall
by heating when the ow rate is high. The viscous sub-layer
becomes thicker and the Prandtl number smaller.
These phenomena which are quite dierent from subcritical uid have been explained by lots of theories. One
categorized side of them is to consider it as a single-phase
ow, and the other side is to consider two-phase. The
single-phase theory explains that some parts of phenomena are attributed to turbulent ow by excessive changes of
physical properties while other conditions such as boilinglike phenomenon can be explained by the two-phase theory.
These theoretical problems have not been solved completely. Therefore, ow visualization study is required to provide
useful knowledge to investigate the theoretical assumptions
of supercritical uids.

INTRODUCTION
In nuclear engineering area, especially in relation to
the development of a reactor using supercritical water as
a coolant[1], the importance of the heat transfer characteristics of supercritical uids has been increased because
thermal dynamic behavior of it is quite dierent from subcritical. As shown in Fig.1, physical properties of the supercritical uid are highly varied around the critical point.
Experimental or numerical studies about the forced convection heat transfer to supercritical uid have been developed since 1960s. Results of these previous studies revealed
lots of unique phenomena of heat transfer to supercritical uids such as heat transfer deterioration that is, heat
transfer coecients vary greatly around the critical points
of uids [2][3]. Under this condition unusual decrease and
oscillation of the heat transfer coecient were observed.
Tanaka et al .[4][5] experimentally proved that the heat

Although the visualized measurements of an enclosure

cell in an area of chemical physics have been performed
by previous researchers, ow visualization technique has
not been applied for measurements of forced convection
heat transfer of supercritical uids because of the experimental diculties of high pressure and temperature. Furthermore, densities of supercritical uids continuously vary
with pressure or temperature and the changes are considerably higher than those of incompressible uids. Because

c
Copyright
2000
by ASME

 Water coolant tank: to cool the heated carbon dioxide from the test section by the coolant water in the
pipes

density is the main factor to determine the refractive index,

it is very dicult for optical methods such as an interferometer or PIV to measure those large variations of the density/refractive index. Therefore, some phenomena such as
boiling-like situation in convection heat transfer have never
been conrmed by the ow visualization.
In this study, ow visualization of the supercritical uid
has been accomplished. That is, the forced convection heat
transfer of carbon dioxide ow at the super/sub-critical
conditions in the vertical rectangular channel has been visualized by the white light to analyze its characteristics
according to the thermal ow dynamics.
The heat transfer from the wall to the supercritical uid should be aected many physical parameters. Several
pictures were recorded with variations of the pressure, ow
rate and heat load in this study. These pictures showed
relations between the boiling-like phenomenon in the supercritical carbon dioxide ow and the physical conditions.

Chiller unit: to cool the carbon dioxide under 5 C to

turn into liquid phase
Diaphragm pump: to increase the pressure from 5
MPa to 15MPa and circulate liquid carbon dioxide.
Frequency of pistons is 81Hz and piston stroke of the
pump denes the ow rate from 0 to 3.4105 m3 /s.
Control valve: to control the pressure around the test
section area, which is electrically manipulated.
Preheater: to set a bulk temperature of ow between
30 and 80 C initially to make the ow supercritical.
Through the control valve, the uid goes back to the
coolant tank.
coolant water
water tank

P4
pressure controll valve

P1

T6
T1
buffer tank

P2

T2

chiller unit
T3

heater
test section

P3

pump1

carbon dioxide tank

pump2

T5

preheater

Figure 2: schematic view of main loop

Pressures at several points were measured by the pressure gauges as shown in Figure 2.
A critical point of the carbon dioxide is as follows.
Figure
1:
Physical
dioxide(P=8MPa),[4]

properties

of

temperature: 31.1 C

carbon

pressure : 7.38 MPa

density : 468 kg/m3

EXPERIMENTAL SETUP

Test Section

Main loop

The installed test section for ow visualization was made

by stainless cylinder, a copper wall which contains micro
heaters, window glasses for high pressure, and 4 thermocouples as shown in Figs.3 and 4. The length of the whole
test section unit is 1200 mm, the size of the rectangular
channel is 10 x 20 mm , and the length of the wall is 600
mm.
The carbon dioxide uid was heated by the micro-heater
in the copper wall. The length of the channel is 600 mm.
In the middle of the test section, there are windows for
visualization with the diameter of 23 mm and the glass
thickness of 60 mm to endure the high pressure. Thus the

The forced convection heat transfer of supercritical carbon dioxide was measured and visualized in the experimental setup of the loop, which is composed of the main
loop and the test section. Figure 2 shows a schematic view
of the main loop of the carbon dioxide that can generate
high pressure and high temperature. Pipes were made of
stainless steel to endure high pressure over 15 MPa and
temperature over 100 C and carbon dioxide was fullled in
the tank from the connected gas cylinders of 5MPa with
its temperature about 20 C (room temperature).
The roles of other parts of the loop are as follows:

c
Copyright
2000
by ASME

Tk

Tout
stainless cylinder

heater

copper wall
micro heater

20
10

channel

window

window

Ta
Tb
Tc

Tbulk

Figure 3: Top view of test section

side view of the rectangular channel with the one-sided wall

heater can be shown by a video camera.
Four thermocouples were installed to measure the ow
and wall temperature. One of them was placed in the ow
near the window to obtain the local temperature of the
uid. Other thermocouples were set in the copper wall at
the dierent positions of distances from the wall surface in
order to calculate heat ux in the wall.

Tin

Figure 4: Side view of test section

Tbulk : bulk temperature of ow near the window

Ta : temperature at 2mm from heated surface
Tb : temperature at 4mm from heated surface

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Tc : temperature at 6mm from heated surface

Forced convection heat transfer of the carbon dioxide

at super/subcritical conditions were visualized using the
diused light system. The parameters of the experiments
are summarized as follows,

Halogen lump was used to illuminate the carbon dioxide ow with back-light technique.Diused lights visualizes
the projection image of the ow. These illuminated images
were taken by the video camera. Also, pressures, bulk and
local temperatures, ow rates were monitored and recorded.
The temperature gradient T /x and surface temperature Ts were obtained from the measured temperature
(Ta , Tb, Tc ). Using the gradient, local heat ux, qlocal , was
calculated, qlocal = c T /x.
c = 386 (W/m K)

P
Tbulk
G
Q

pressure
bulk temperature
mass ow rate
heat load

(MPa)
( C)
(kg/m2 s)
(W)

Subcritical Condition
Under the subcritical condition, the boiling phenomenon
did occur. Figure 6 shows the visualized image with boiling. The experimental conditions are, Tbulk =31 C, P =7.0
MPa, Q=576W and G=0kg/m2 s, (stagnant subcritical uid). The heated wall was shown as the black bar at the
right hand side. The intensity of the uid increases from
right to left. Without bubbles (left area), the uid was
shown as white light. At the right area, close to heated
wall, the dark area are shown. Small bubbles scattered the
back light, causing the view to be dark. The boiling phenomenon could be observed as the dark images under the
subcritical condition.

Visualization Method
Figure 5 shows a schematic view of the measurement
area in the test section. The large refractive index variation such as boiling could be observed simply by illuminating the uid from the backside. The convection heat
transfer could be observed as uctuation of refractive index. Because the light was highly scattered or disturbed by
the bubbles, the boiling could be observed as dark layers.
The shutter speed of the camera was 1/1000 sec. The time
resolution of the image is 60Hz.

c
Copyright
2000
by ASME

Comparing with cases 2 and 3, (Figs. 8 and 9), the dark

layer (bubble layer) in case 2 is much thicker than that in
case 3. Because of the higher velocity, the bubbles were
driven upward soon causing the bubble layer to be thin.
Also the local heat ux of case 2 was lower than that of
case 3 as shown in Table 1. The boiling-like phenomenon
was assumed to depend on the ow rate when the pressures
are the same. The bubble layer thickness also related to the
heat transfer. The thicker the layer, the smaller the heat
transfer. This is because the size of the boiling area is
thicker for smaller ow rate and this boiling-like area may
disturb the heat transfer from the wall to the uid.
Figure 10 shows the image of case 4 (higher pressure).
The boiling-like phenomenon was not observed. In this
case, the mass ow rate was also greater than that of the
reference case 3.

back light

window =23mm
heat flux
flow

10mm
20mm

Conclusion
Although this experiment setup could provide boilinglike images the quantitative consideration of the boiling
area was not performed yet because information was obtained only by the light intensity distribution. However,
the wide change of the physical properties near the wall
in the supercritical carbon dioxide ow could be detected by this system. Although the boiling condition can be
presumed to be one of reasons or the heat transfer deterioration, the heat transfer in the supercritical ow is still ambiguous. Thus, the quantitative optical measurement
should be performed to investigate the local behavior of the
ow. For example, interferometer technique can be used to
measure the density distribution of the ow quantitatively
to observe a phenomena in the supercritical condition.

video camera
Figure 5: Schmatic view of channel

Supercritical Condition
The supercritical ow was visualized with varying the
parameters. In this study, the following four cases were
examined.
case#
1
2
3
4

P (MPa)
7.4
7.4
7.4
9.0

Tin ( C)
31
31
31
31

G(kg/m2 s)
305
153
305
305

Q(W)
256
576
576
576

Case 3 was the reference condition. In case 1,2 and 4,

heat ux, ow rate and pressure were varied from case 3
condition, respectively. In case 4, the mass ow rate was
varied from that of case 3, however, the ow rate was xed
to be the same value.
When the heat ux were assumed to be uniform, the
average heat ux only depends on the heat load Q. While,
the local heat ux depends on the heat load and local ow
conditions.
Figures 7,8,9 and 10 show the visualized images for
above cases 1,2,3 and 4, respectively.
In Fig.7 (case 1: low heat load), the image is uniformly
white, this means that ow was relatively stable without
boiling. In Figs. 8 and 9 (case 2: load mass ow rate)
and (case 3: reference), the boiling-like phenomenon was
observed near the wall. The dark area was caused by the
light scattering inside the heated uid. These gures are
similar to the subcritical boiling images. With the high
heat load, the large density variation (refractive index variation) did occur, resulting in the boiling-like phenomenon
to be observed.

Figure 6: Visualized image of CO2 ow in subcritical condition

c
Copyright
2000
by ASME

Figure 7: visualized image of CO2 ow in case1

Figure 9: visualized image of CO2 ow in case 3

Figure 8: visualized image of CO2 ow in case 2

Figure 10: visualized image of CO2 ow in case 4

6 S.Koshizuka, N.Takano and Y.Oka, Numerical analysis of deterioration phenomena in heat transfer to
supercritical water Int.J.Heat Mass Transfer, (1995)
Vol.38, No.16,pp3077-3084

REFERENCES
1 Y.Oka, S.Koshizuka and T.Yamasaki, Direct cycle
light water reactor operating at supercritical pressure, J.Nucl.Sci.Technol.29,585-588(1992)
2 N.L.Dickinson
and C.P.Welch, Heat transer to supercritical water,
Trans.Am.Soc.Mech.Engrs 80,746(1958)
3 R.D.Wood and J.M.Smith, Heat transfer in the critical region -Temperature and velocity proles in turbulent ow, A.I.Ch.E.Jl 10, 180(1964)
4 H.Tanaka, N. Nishiwaki, M.Hirata and A Tsuge,
Forced convection heat transfer to uid near critical point owing in circular tube, Int.J.Heat Mass
Transfer, (1971) Vol.14, pp.739-750
5 H.Tanaka, N.Nishiwaki and M.Hirata, Turbulent
heat
transfer to supercritical carbon dioxide, Proc.Japan
Soc.Mech.Engrs Semi-Int.Symp.,Tokyo,Heat Mass
Transfer, Vol.2,127(1967)

c
Copyright
2000
by ASME