Heat Transfer Profiles in a Vertical, Bare, 7-Element Bundle Cooled with Supercritical Freon-12

Abstract

Experimental data on SuperCritical-Water (SCW) cooled bundles are very limited. However, SuperCritical Water-cooled nuclear Reactor (SCWRs) designs cannot be optimized without such data. A set of experimental data obtained in Freon-12 (modeling fluid) cooled vertical bare bundle at the Institute of Physics and Power Engineering (IPPE, Obninsk, Russia) was analyzed. The existence of three distinct regimes for forced convention with supercritical fluids was experienced. (1) Normal heat transfer; (2) Deteriorated heat transfer, characterized by higher than expected temperatures; and (3) Enhanced heat transfer, characterized by lower than expected temperatures. This work compares the heat transfer coefficient of the experiments to predictions based upon current correlations for heat transfer in super critical fluids where the 1-D correlations are based upon tube data under supercritical water conditions.