Numerical Investigation of a Supercritical CO$$_2$$ Centrifugal Compressor with an In-House Density Based Compressible CFD Solver

This work presents a numerical investigation of the performance characteristics, flow field and internal aerodynamic losses of a supercritical CO\(_{2}\) centrifugal compressor. The investigated compressor geometry is deduced from main dimensions of a sCO\(_{2}\) test-loop main compressor operated by Sandia National Laboratories. Three-dimensional CFD simulations are performed with an in-house hybrid CPU/GPU compressible CFD solver. An efficient and accurate real gas property tabulation technique, the Spline-Based Table Look-Up Method (SBTL), which is particularly optimised for the densitiy based solution method, is coupled to the flow solver to account for thermophysical properties. CFD simulations are compared to experimental data as well as a 1D-meanline analysis.