Numerical study of natural convection heat transfer to supercritical carbon dioxide in a vertical tube using Span and Wagner multi-parameter equation of state

Supercritical fluids have substituted non-super critical fluids in some areas of industry because of their unique characteristics and have been the subject of numerous experimental, numerical and analytic studies since their discovery. In this study laminar natural convection between a hot vertical tube with constant temperature and supercritical carbon dioxide with uniform temperature at inlet is simulated by utilizing a numerical model. The simulation is a two-dimensional, pseudo-transient numerical model based on finite volume method. The main objective of this study is to investigate and analyze the effect of severe property variations of supercritical carbon dioxide on the flow and temperature field of natural convection that ultimately affect heat transfer rates with respect to non-critical natural convection. Numerical simulations have been carried out for temperature and pressure ranges of 305K to 312K and 7.5MPa to 9MPa respectively. Span and Wanger’s multi-parameter equation of state have been used directly to determine carbon dioxide properties around pseudo critical temperature for the first time. Results indicate an increased rate of total heat transfer up to 160% near pseudo-critical temperature and 118% in other temperatures for supercritical natural convection with respect to ideal gas assumption.