Development of a correlation on the convective heat transfer of supercritical pressure $CO_2$ vertically upward flowing in a circular tube

원형관에서 수직상향유동 초임계압 $CO_2$의 대류열전달 상관식 개발

In a SCWR (SuperCritical pressure Water cooled Reactor), the coolant temperature initially at below the pseudo-critical temperature at the bottom of a reactor core increases as the coolant flows upward through the sub-channels of the fuel assemblies, and it finally becomes higher than the pseudo-critical temperature when it leaves the reactor core. At certain conditions, heat transfer deterioration occurs near the pseudo-critical temperature and it may cause a drastic rise of the fuel surface temperature resulting a fuel failure. Therefore, an accurate estimation of the heat transfer coefficient is very important for the thermal-hydraulic design of a reactor core. An experiment on heat transfer to the vertically upward flowing $CO_2$ at a supercritical pressure in a circular tube were performed at KAERI. The internal diameter of the test section is 6.32 mm, which corresponds to the hydraulic diameter of a sub-channel in the conceptional design proposed by KAERI. The test range of the mass flux is 285 to 1200 kg/m$^2$s and the maximum heat flux is 170 kW/m$^2$. The inlet pressure is maintained at 8.12 MPa, which is 1.1 times the critical pressure. A new correlation, which covers both the normal and deterioration heat transfer regimes was proposed and compared with the estimations by exiting correlations.