Project Grant 2231393

This $300,000 National Science Foundation project grant, awarded under the Engineering program (CFDA 47.041), will fund the development of experimental capabilities to measure properties of supercritical fluids and their mixtures at the University of North Texas from August 2022 to July 2023. The university will obtain experimental data on critical properties for mixtures of carbon dioxide with argon and R134a refrigerant. It will also conduct natural convection experiments to demonstrate the effect of temperature and pressure in the anomalous region around the critical point. The goal is to improve fundamental understanding of supercritical fluids' performance in heat transfer applications such as direct solar energy conversion, power generation, and thermal management of space systems. Findings could enable applications in solar thermal and power generation systems utilizing supercritical fluid mixtures for heat dissipation at extreme temperatures.