Effect of buoyancy on the laminar boundary layer in stably/unstably stratified flow of supercritical carbon dioxide

Abstract

Amidst the rise in fossil fuel consumption and the global energy crisis, there is a growing demand for clean, environmentally friendly, and sustainable energy solutions in industrial processes. One promising approach is to substitute conventional working fluids in power cycles with supercritical fluids. Over recent decades, substantial research effort has been made in investigating supercritical fluids. Among these, supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) has emerged as a practical and alternative solution. Its low critical pressure and temperature, high thermal efficiency, and operational flexibility have garnered widespread interest across various energy applications, particularly in heat exchangers and gas-powered cycles. However, the complex flow dynamics and heat transfer characteristics of sCO2 near its critical point have become the subject of intense research. When sCO2 flows through a heated channel, strong density gradients can generate dominant buoyancy forces that can significantly affect the supercritical fluid structure, mixing and transport properties. Understanding buoyancy-affected flows is highly crucial as it can lead to flow stratification and heat transfer deterioration or enhancement in the channel.

The role of buoyancy forces in flow stratification is quite substantial and can stabilize or destabilize the stratified structure by inducing or dampening instabilities. While numerous computational simulations have been performed to understand the mechanism of buoyancy-affected stratification in ideal fluids, whilst, a notable research gap exists in the literature on supercritical fluid stratified flow. Therefore, the present study aims to investigate the influence of buoyancy on the sCO2 flow stratification in a channel, considering heating from the top and bottom walls. In this context, a Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) is conducted using the open-source CFD package ”OpenFOAM” to simulate pressure-driven sCO2 channel flow under constant wall heat flux. A buoyant pimple foam solver was adapted to simulate transient supercritical flow. To gain good accuracy in the thermophysical properties, a custom library was prepared to interpolate supercritical fluid properties at simulation run-time. To assess the influence of buoyancy in the heated channel flow of sCO2, a developing flow profile is initiated at a constant pressure of 80 bar. Stratification is achieved by imposing a heat flux at the wall boundary spanning in the heating range of 5 − 15 kW /m2, resulting in density and temperature variation across the fluid. By varying the heat flux at the wall boundary, we analyze the resulting variation in the flow field (temperature, velocity, and pressure distribution), the dynamics of heat transfer, and the influence of buoyancy by the non-dimensional parameter Richardson number in the stratification of supercritical carbon dioxide. The results show that the effect of heating on the developing boundary layer in sCO2 channel flow is substantial. With increasing heat flux, the flow is accelerated near the heated wall while decelerating in the bulk. A strong non-linear variation in the temperature and density distribution is observed in the wall-normal direction. Moreover, as the heat flux increases, the wall shear stress decreases due to strong property variation, while the Richardson number and Reynolds number increases, and the heat transfer coefficient decreases.