Assessment of FLUENT Code as a Tool for SCW Heat Transfer Analysis

Generation-IV SuperCritical Water-cooled Reactors (SCWRs) are expected to have high thermal efficiencies within the range of 45–50% owing to the reactor’s high pressures and outlet temperatures. The behavior of supercritical water however, is not well understood and most of the methods available to predict the effects of the heat transfer phenomena within the pseudocritical region are based on empirical one-directional correlations which do not capture the multi-dimensional effects and do not provide accurate results in regions such as the deteriorated heat transfer regime. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is a numerical approach to model fluids in multidimensional space using the Navier-Stokes equations and databases of fluid properties to arrive at a full simulation of a fluid dynamics and heat transfer system. In this work, the CFD code, FLUENT-12, is used with associated software such as Gambit and NIST REFPROP to predict the Heat Transfer Coefficients at the wall and corresponding wall temperature profiles inside vertical bare tubes with SuperCritical Water (SCW) as the cooling medium. The numerical results are compared with experimental data and 1-D models represented by existing empirical correlations. Analysis of the individual heat-transfer regimes is conducted using an axisymmetric 2-D model of tubes of various lengths and composed of different nodalizations along the heated length. Wall temperatures and heat transfer coefficients were analyzed to select the best model for each region (below, at and above the pseudocritical region). Two turbulent models were used in the process: k-ε and k-ω, with variations in the sub-model parameters such as viscous heating, thermal effects, and low-Reynolds number correction. Results of the analysis show a fit of ±10% for the wall temperatures using the SST k-ω model in the deteriorated heat transfer regime and less than ±5% for the normal heat transfer regime. The accuracy of the model is higher than any empirical correlation tested in the mentioned regimes, and provides additional information about the multidimensional effects between the bulk-fluid and wall temperatures.Copyright © 2013 by ASME