A new correlation for heat transfer coefficient prediction of supercritical pressure water flowing in vertical upward tubes

Supercritical pressure water has been widely used in many industrial fields, such as fossil-fired power plants and nuclear reactors because mainly of its high thermal efficiencies. Although many empirical correlations for heat transfer coefficients of supercritical pressure water have been proposed by different authors based on different experimental data base, there exist remarkable discrepancies between the predicted heat transfer coefficients of different correlations under even the same condition. Heat transfer correlations with good prediction performance are of considerable significance for developing supercritical (ultra-supercritical) pressure boilers and SCWRs. In this paper, the experimental data (about 7389 experimental data points) and 30 existing empirical correlations for heat transfer of supercritical pressure water (SCW) flowing in vertical upward tubes are collected from the open literatures. Evaluations of the prediction performance of the existing correlations are conducted based on the collected experimental data, and a detailed multi-collinearity analysis has been made on different correction factors involved in the existing correlations, and then based on the collected experimental data, a new heat transfer correlation is developed for the supercritical pressure water flowing in vertical upward tubes under normal and enhanced heat transfer mode. Compared with the existing correlations, the new correlation exhibits good prediction accuracy, with a mean absolute deviation (MAD) of 9.63%.