The Ranque Vortex Effect in a Rotating Plasma

Abstract

The Ranque-Hilsch vortex tube effect is observed in a rotating magnetoplasma. INTRODUCTION In 1934 George Ranque patented a simple cylindrical tube (Fig. 1) into which compressed air is injected tangentially in order to induce gas swirling (Ranque, 1934; Hilsch, 1947). A radial temperature gradient was observed in the rotating gas vortex and the introduction of baffles (Fig. 1) permits one to extract selectively cold air from the vortex core or hot air from the periphery. During the course of experiments on rotating plasmas I have observed what I believe to be the Ranque-Hilsch effect occurring in the plasma state. METHODS The present experiments were conducted in the device illustrated in Figure 2. A discharge is struck between the rod cathode, C, and a grid anode disc, A. Plasma, P, streams down the magnetic field, B, until it strikes the aperture disc, a. The central core plasma can pass through the aperture into the downstream region, 2. An electrostatic energy analyzer (Jones, 1978, 1979), E, H C_ _ 8 Figure 1. Longitudinal cross section of Ranque vortex tube. Tangentially injected gas jet, a, drives swirling gas flows which direct hot gas out pipe H and cold gas out pipe C. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.231 on Thu, 06 Oct 2016 04:18:34 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 110 TRANSACTIONS OF THE KANSAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE B .A a P