The expansion mechanism inside carbon dioxide expander is analyzed theoretically in this paper.The mechanism analysis of metastable equilibrium indicates that there is a potential barrier during phase change process.That is to say energy is required to overcome the potential barrier when the new interface is formed from primary phase.The superheat of liquid is the impetus of phase change and has an exponential decrease with the increase of the saturated temperature of fluid.The analysis also indicates that there is a critical radius during the phase change process.The bubble will grow up when its radius is larger than the critical value,otherwise,will disappear.When considering the metastable phase change,calculation of P and V during expansion process indicates that the phase-change will be delayed with the decline of pressure,which is called lag phenomenon.The phase-change delay time decreases with the increase of initial temperature.When the initial temperature is close to the critical temperature,the delay time is close to zero.The phase-change delay brings energy losses,which decrease with the increase of initial temperature and its decrease ratio also has a decrease trend.When the initial pressure is 10 MPa,the energy loss will be 1.06 W with an initial temperature of 10℃ while 0.34 W with that of 20℃.
