Heat Transfer Correlations of Supercritical Fluids

The drastic changes of thermophysical properties in the pseudo-critical region of supercritical fluids bring very big challenges to the traditional Dittus-Boelter-type heat transfer correlations. In this chapter, we will talk about the principles and applications of two kinds of heat transfer correlations of supercritical fluids: the empirical type and the semiempirical type. For the empirical correlations, the modification methods taking into account the variable properties and body force effects will be introduced. We will focus on the proposal of nondimensional parameters describing the buoyancy effect and flow acceleration; while for the semiempirical ones, we mainly talk about the new kind of correlation which is based on the momentum and energy conservations in the mixed convective flow.