Numerical Study on the Mixed Convection Heat Transfer between a Sphere Particle and High Pressure Water in Pseudocritical Zone

Mixed convection heat transfer between supercritical water and particles is a major basic problem in supercritical water fluidized bed reactor, but little work focused on this new area in the past. In this paper, a numerical model fully accounting for thermophysical property variation has been established to investigate heat transfer between supercritical water and a single spherical particle under gravity. Flow field, temperature field and Nusselt number are analyzed based on the simulation results. Results show that buoyancy force has a remarkable effect on flow and heat transfer process. When the direction of gravity and flow are opposite, the gravity enhances the heat transfer before the separation point and inhibits the heat transfer after the separation point. When gravity is incorporated in calculation, a higher temperature gradient and a thinner boundary layer in the vicinity of the particle surface are observed before separation point, and the situations are just the reverse after separation point. Variation of specific heat and conductivity plays a main role in determination of heat transfer coefficient.