Steady state and stability characteristics of natural circulation loops operating with carbon dioxide at supercritical pressures for open and closed loop boundary conditions

Experiments were conducted in a closed supercritical pressure natural circulation loop (SPNCL) with carbon dioxide as working fluid. Instability was observed in a narrow window of power with the loop operating in the pseudo-critical temperature range (heater inlet temperature in the range of 27–31 °C and heater outlet temperature oscillating from 29 to 45 °C). Only horizontal heater horizontal cooler orientation exhibited instability and that too at low secondary side chilled water mass flow rate, i.e. 10–15 lpm. A computer code NOLSTA has been developed to carry out steady state and stability analysis of open and closed loop natural circulation at supercritical conditions. The code adequately predicts steady state natural circulation performance for both open and closed loop boundary conditions. However, code predicts very large unstable zone for SPNCL, hence pipe wall thermal capacitance models were incorporated in NOLSTA code to simulate the experimental results. The stability predictions by NOLSTA code (with pipe wall thermal capacitance model) have been compared with experimental data available in open literature and experiments conducted in SPNCL.