Vortex Tube Lab Report

MODELLING AND INVESTIGATION OF CHANGE IN WORKING PARAMETERS ON THE PERFORMANCE OF THE VORTEX TUBE.

1Inamdar S.R.,2Pokharkar S.D.,3Shelke N.M.,4Kute Viren

Mechanical engineering Jaihind College of Engineering Kuran, Pune ,India

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ABSTRACT

Vortex tube is simple device without any external energy and chemical reaction it gives two kinds of energy hot air energy and cold air energy. A number of observations and theories have been explored by different investigators concerning this phenomenon. It does not having any moving parts, so leakage problem is minimize. By using compressed air as an input we get refrigeration effect. Vortex tube firstly discovered by George Ranque in 1933 and after that

Construction of vortex tube.

The Fig.1shows the construction of the vortex tube. It contains the parts like inlet nozzle, vortex chamber, cold chamber, cold end orifice, hot end control valve & hot tube, cold tube. Vortex tube was discovered in 1933 but at that time the efficiency of this tube is low and for improving the efficiency of this tube we change the some parameters of this tube like length of the hot tube, orifice diameter, material of this tube and also L/D ratio. Vortex tube having number of advantages such as compactness, reliability, lower equipment cost, maintenance free, no external energy is required ,no any moving parts .The vortex tube is used for various applications like spot cooling, air conditioning , cooling of electronic circuit. The objective of the current research is to find out the optimum value of cold end temp and mass of the cold air, with the help of CFD and experimental techniques.

Flow diagram of Vortex tube:

Air is compressed into compressor .This high temp air is passed to the heat exchanger. After that air passed to the dryer, where air is completely dry and regulate the pressure of the inlet pressure of air up to 5 to 10 bar and then this compressed air is pass to the vortex tube through the inlet

The diameter of the nozzle is 9mm. A tangential cut is given to the nozzle by using a hacksaw blade.

Working:

Working of the Vortex tube is shown in Fig.10.

Fig.10.Working of Vortex tube

Compressed air is passed through the nozzle as shown in Fig.10. Here, air expands and acquires high velocity due to particular shape of the nozzle. A vortex flow is created in the chamber and air travels in spiral like motion along the periphery of the hot side. This flow is restricted by the valve. When the pressure of the air near valve is made more than outside by partly closing the valve, a reversed axial flow through the core of the hot side starts from high-pressure region to low-pressure region. During this process, heat transfer takes place between reversed stream and forward stream. Therefore, air stream through the core gets cooled below the inlet temperature of the air in the vortex tube, while air stream in forward direction gets heated up. The cold stream is escaped through the diaphragm hole into the cold side, while hot stream is passed through the opening of the valve. By controlling the opening of the valve, the quantity of the cold air an its temperature can be