Grant: NSERC/NRCan/AECL Generation IV Energy Technologies Program

Supercritical Fluid Flow Dynamics Canada's bid to design the next generation nuclear reactor cooled by light water at supercritical pressure has raised the importance of research on supercritical flow dynamics. It would be the first such nuclear reactor in Canada, and perhaps the western hemisphere. With $400,000 from CFI and $100,000 from Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., a Supercritical Flow Facility (SFF) was built at the University of Manitoba, Dept of Mechanical Engineering, to further the understanding of supercritical flow instability, pressure drop and heat transfer characteristics. The SFF is a vertically oriented natural-convection driven system that comprises three parallel heated channels on the lower, horizontal tier and a heat-exchanger on the upper horizontal tier. It is designed to operate with supercritical CO2 and H2O and study (a) flow instability, (b) pressure drop and (c) heat transfer in the flow direction. The first set of experiments will run with supercritical CO2 because of the lower pressure (~10 MPa) and temperature (~35C) compared with supercritical water. This will provide valuable experience to the researchers before adapting the facility to run with water, which will be at ~25 MPa and ~500C. Mathematically, the stability behavior of CO2 has been shown to be similar to water -- hence, it is prudent to perform experiments first with supercritical CO2. The experiments proposed here will be to conduct supercritical flow instability experiments as well as measure pressure drop for comparison with available correlations.