Fluid-to-fluid scaling of heat transfer to mixed convection flow of supercritical pressure fluids

Fluid-to-fluid scaling for supercritical heat transfer can effectively reduce the difficulty and cost of heat transfer experiments in supercritical boilers and supercritical water reactors and can reduce the number of experiments by converting experimental data of the model fluid to the prototype fluid in organic Rankine cycles. Currently, most existing scaling methods are only suitable for forced convection, while few are developed for mixed convection where buoyancy significantly affects the heat transfer. This paper attempts to extend the applicability of scaling method to mixed convection with the aid of computational fluid dynamic simulations. The scaling parameters were analyzed first and then the shear-stress transport k-ω model was used to analyze the supercritical heat transfer characteristics of water and R134a to provide further information for developing a dimensionless number. The results show that significant variations of properties and flow parameters occur in the layer of y⁺ = 5 to 100 and the axial velocity gradient in this layer changes in quite a similar manner to the wall temperature. Based on numerical results, the axial velocity gradient was used with a thermal resistance analogy to derive a new dimensionless number, Re^−0.9π_A, to scale the mass flux. Then, a set of fluid-to-fluid scaling laws were developed to predict the heat transfer to supercritical fluids. To validate the newly proposed scaling laws, well-developed correlations were used for forced convection flow and a direct validation method was developed for buoyancy-influenced flow. Results show that this new scaling method exhibits reasonable accuracy for both forced and mixed convection heat transfer with supercritical fluids.