Open Access

ARTICLE

Influence of Porous Coke on Flow and Heat Transfer Characteristics of Supercritical RP-3

Yu Zhang¹, Shang-Zhen Yu², Jia-Jia Yu^2,3,*

1 National Engineering Research Center for Disaster and Emergency Rescue Equipment, Army Logistics Academy, Chongqing, 401331, China
2 Key Laboratory of Low-grade Energy Utilization Technologies and Systems of Ministry of Education, School of Energy and Power Engineering, Chongqing University, Chongqing, 400044, China
3 State Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Reservoir Geology and Exploitation, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu, 610500, China

* Corresponding Author: Jia-Jia Yu. Email:

Fluid Dynamics & Materials Processing 2025, 21(5), 1151-1169. https://doi.org/10.32604/fdmp.2025.057804

Received 28 August 2024; Accepted 18 December 2024; Issue published 30 May 2025

Abstract

RP-3 is a kind of aviation kerosene commonly used in hypersonic and scramjet engines due to its superior thermal stability, high energy density, and ability to act as a coolant before combustion. However, it is known that coke can be generated during the cooling process as a carbonaceous deposition on metal walls and its effects on the cooling performance are still largely unknown. To explore the influence mechanism of porous coke on heat transfer characteristics of supercritical RP-3 in the regenerative cooling channel, a series of computational simulations were conducted via a three-dimensional CFD model considering solid wall, porous media and fluid simultaneously. The results show that the porous coke leads to the heat transfer deterioration, but when the coke layer thickness exceeds 1 mm, the weakening influence of coke on heat transfer becomes less important. The effect of porous coke on heat transfer under different inlet flow rates and wall heat fluxes was also analyzed and it was found that the heat exchange between channel wall and RP-3 is more detrimentally affected at large inlet mass flow rate. In a smooth channel, the heat transfer coefficient has a sudden rise along the flow direction, but the presence of porous coke mitigates the abrupt change. Furthermore, the variation of heat flux made a subtle difference in the effect of porous coke on the heat transfer of RP-3.

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Keywords

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