Forced flow heat transfer of supercritical hydrogen for superconductor cooling

Heat transfer from inner side of a vertical tube to forced flow of hydrogen was measured at the pressure of 1.5 MPa. The test tubes were made of stainless steel 316L with the inner diameters from 3 mm to 9 mm and lengths from 100 mm to 250 mm. Heat transfer curves were obtained by gradually increasing the heating current to the test tube and raising the surface temperature up to around 200 K. Inlet fluid temperature and flow velocity were varied from 21 to 30 K and 0.5 to 12 m/s, respectively. Effects of inlet temperature, flow velocity and tube dimension were clearly observed. The heat transfer curve for each flow velocity consists of a lower temperature region with a higher gradient and higher temperature region with a lower gradient. The experimental results were compared with the authors’ correlation presented formerly. It was confirmed that this correlation can describe the experimental results obtained here.