Numerical Analysis of Mass Flow Leakage Through Orifices for Supercritical CO2: Two-Phase Flow Effects

Supercritical CO2 (sCO2) holds a great promise as a future working fluid for power generating Brayton cycles. One of the challenging research areas in sCO2 power cycles is flow leakage and the design of seals on the compressor side of the cycle. Given the compact nature of sCO2 turbomachinery, even a minimal amount of leakage can lead to a significant power efficiency loss. Hence accurate prediction of mass flow leakage rate becomes important. However, on the compressor side of the cycle, operating conditions across the seal lead to two-phase flow. This makes flow modeling very challenging because conventional one-phase flow CFD models cannot be used. This paper is an attempt to understand the behavior of two-phase sCO2 flow going through circular and annular orifices. The focus is to utilize commercially available CFD scheme for modeling phase change and two-phase flow through constrictions. Since the pressure loss across constrictions is also accompanied with reduction in temperature, the flow becomes two-phase by entering the saturation dome. CFD simulation is performed using commercially available software STAR CCM+. 2D axisymmetric geometry is considered as the computational domain. Eulerian Multi-phase Mixture model is used in conjunction with the Two-Phase Thermodynamic Equilibrium implementation. This model is intended for applications that involve two phases of the same substance that are in thermodynamic equilibrium. Fluid properties are defined over a large range of temperatures and pressures, including both the liquid and vapor phases.