Performance of Heat Transfer Correlations Adopted at Supercritical Pressures: A Review

Research activities involving heat transfer at supercritical pressures have attracted attention in recent years because of possibility of increase in thermal output of heat transfer and industrial equipment. Because of high pressure and temperature conditions associated with heat transfer at supercritical pressures, only few experimental heat transfer studies are being carried out at supercritical conditions. The use of numerical tools for heat transfer and other related studies at supercritical pressures is increasing because of the high-pressure-temperature limitation of experimental studies at supercritical conditions. Heat transfer correlations implemented in these numerical tools are used to obtain numerical heat transfer data to complement experimental heat transfer data provided through experimental studies. In order to further broaden the understanding of fluid flow and heat transfer, this review examines the performance of heat transfer correlations adopted at supercritical pressures. It is found from the review that most of the correlations could predict heat transfer quite well in the low enthalpy region and few of the correlations could predict heat transfer in the high enthalpy region near critical and pseudo-critical conditions (heat transfer deteriorated conditions). However, no single heat transfer correlation is able to accurately predict all the experimental results presented in this work.