Numerical simulation of a supercritical heat-exchanger using the lattice Boltzmann method
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Recently, supercritical heat-exchangers has recovered the attention of researches to applications in GenIV supercritical water-cooled reactors (SCWR). As supercritical fluids have high heat capacity and low viscosity, they present an efficient heat exchange and reduce the overall energy requirements, resulting in more compact devices. However, under this operating condition the properties of the fluids experience high variations with temperature changes. Here we propose a modified lattice-Boltzmann method (LBM) to deal with supercritical flows, based on modifications of existing models for conjugated heat transfer problems, enhancing the numerical scheme to deal with temperature-dependent properties. Then, we employ the proposed model to investigate a heat exchanger operating with water as both a hot (supercritical) and cold fluid (compressed liquid). We investigate the effects of the supercritical-subcritical transition by performing a parametric evaluation of the hot fluid mass flow rate. The results evidenced the multi-dimensionality of the supercritical-subcritical transition, with the fluid flow presenting high thermal property variations in both $x$ and $y$ directions. It elucidates the importance of considering both temperature-dependent properties and more robust numerical methods when dealing with supercritical flows, even more if the conditions are close to the critical point.
Source: Nuclear Engineering and Design
Language: English
Subfield: Computational Mechanics
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $2,710
OpenAlex ID: W7119113568