Study on coupled heat transfer model and enhanced heat transfer law of liquid metals and supercritical fluids

ABSTRACT

The supercritical carbon dioxide Brayton cycle system is being considered for application in the power conversion system of advanced liquid metal fast reactors. One important research topic is the coupled heat transfer characteristics and enhanced heat transfer laws between liquid metals and supercritical fluids. However, the traditional Reynolds analogy hypothesis with a constant turbulent Prandtl number is difficult to satisfy the numerical conjugate heat transfer research of liquid metals and supercritical fluids. Therefore, based on the open-source computational fluid dynamics program OpenFOAM, a numerical method suitable for the coupled heat transfer calculation of liquid metals and supercritical fluids was developed, which can achieve precise conjugate heat transfer solutions by applying different turbulence models and heat flux models to liquid metals and supercritical fluids. Subsequently, based on this method, the coupled heat transfer behavior of liquid metals and supercritical fluids in the straight channel of a typically printed circuit heat exchanger was studied. The focus was investigating the conjugate heat transfer characteristics of liquid heavy metal lead-bismuth eutectic and liquid metal sodium with supercritical carbon dioxide. Some sensitive results, including the inlet temperature and Reynolds number of liquid metals and supercritical fluids, were qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed.

KEYWORDS:

• Liquid metals
• supercritical fluids
• PCHE
• coupling heat transfer
• four-equation model

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2023M731458), the Natural Science Foundation of Gansu Province (23JRRA1099), and the National Outstanding Youth Science Fund Project of National Natural Science Foundation of China (12122512).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation [2023M731458]; National Natural Science Foundation of China [12122512]; Natural Science Foundation of Gansu Province [23JRRA1099].