An Experimental Facility for Studying Heat Transfer in Supercritical Fluids

Abstract

A state-of-art research facility has been built at the University of Ottawa, which is suitable for thermalhydraulic experiments in support of the development of the Canadian Supercritical-Water-Cooled Reactor (SCWR). The facility is a recirculating flow loop, using carbon dioxide as a medium and having three different test sections, two tubes with inner diameters of 8 and 22 mm, respectively, and a three-rod bundle. The loop can operate within ranges of pressure, temperature, heat flux and mass flux, which are of interest to the current SCWR design. The present thesis includes a comprehensive description of the facility. It also documents the procedure and results of its commissioning, as well as some preliminary measurements that have been collected so far. It is intended to provide an insight to the design of the facility and its functionality and to serve as a reference for future research activities. A number of tests performed by previous researchers in other facilities were replicated and nearly identical results were obtained. It was demonstrated that the design of the facility is sound and its performance is adequate within the intended ranges of operation conditions. It is expected that the results obtained in this facility will make a significant contribution to the understanding of supercritical heat transfer and pressure losses in the SCWR context.