Abstract
The vortex tube is an energy separation device that separates compressed gas stream into a low and a high temperature stream. Present work reports the flow behavior inside the vortex tube for different commonly used fluids with varied properties like Air, He, N2, CO2 and NH3. Flow behavior investigation for three-dimensional short straight-diverging vortex tube is done with CFD code (ANSYS 16.0). Different turbulent models, standard k-epsilon, Realizable k-epsilon and RNG k-epsilon are tested. Realizable k-epsilon model was then used for analysis. Flow behavior of gases with varied multi-atomic number is analyzed and compared with literature. The effect on temperature for N2 is found to be better, followed by He, CO2, Air and NH3. Energy separation for N2 is 46 % higher than all other gases. Energy separation and flow behavior inside vortex tube is analyzed and compared with literature.
Highlights
Vortex tube produces hot and cold streams of air from tangentially supplied compressed air
The initial increase in total pressure and the sudden drop, indicates that the intensity of energy separation is higher at the entrance of the tube upto length (X/L=0.062 to X/L=0.42) while, it decreases towards hot end
Highest tangential velocity is at inlet and towards hot and cold end the tangential velocities are lower
Summary
Vortex tube produces hot and cold streams of air from tangentially supplied compressed air. It is one of the nonconventional refrigeration devices. (Ranque, 1933) invented the vortex tube. The tube is widely known as RHVT (Ranque-Hilsch Vortex Tube). The mechanism of the working of the vortex tube is as follows. The flow becomes stagnant and kinetic energy of the flow converts into heat energy. On the axis, this stagnant flow locates stagnation point, which contributes to the energy separation by virtue of its position
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