Testing of a hot- and cold-wire probe to measure simultaneously the speed and temperature in supercritical CO2 flow

The use of hot-wire anemometry in carbon dioxide flow under supercritical conditions has been analyzed and implemented for the first time. A two-sensor probe to simultaneously measure streamwise velocity and temperature in this flow has been designed and constructed. A calibration and test flow loop that can provide supercritical state conditions above the critical point has been also designed, fabricated and tested. The temperature and velocity flow fields of the flow loop can be varied at constant pressure. It has been found that, above the pseudo-critical temperature, the velocity sensor response fits King’s cooling law with a high correlation coefficient. The dependence of the King’s law parameters on temperature can be accurately presented with second or higher order polynomial or exponential fits, depending on the extent of the temperature range. Below the pseudocritical temperature the data is scattered, and the variation with temperature of the King’s law parameters, determined from calibration, is irregular. The influence on this data scatter of the strong variation of the fluid properties near the critical point is analyzed, and a possibility to reduce it is proposed. The temperature sensor response both above and below the pseudocritical temperature is similar to the response under normal conditions. It is linear with a very high correlation coefficient between the calibration data and the fitted curve. It is also shown that the temperature response is not affected by variation of the flow’s speed.