High-accuracy experimental study of performance characteristics of optimised Ranque-Hilsch vortex tube

•Performance of cylindrical vortex tube determined experimentally with high accuracy.•Experimental uncertainty has been accurately quantified.•Extreme values have been reported for various non-dimensional parameters.•Non-dimensional temperature separation increases with overall pressure ratio.•Resul...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Applied thermal engineering 2024-08, Vol.251, p.123385, Article 123385
Main Authors: Chowdhury, Nafiz H.K., Povey, Thomas
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cooling
Energy separation
Pressure ratio
Ranque-Hilsch
Refrigerator
Turbomachinery
Vortex tube
Citations: Items that this one cites
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:•Performance of cylindrical vortex tube determined experimentally with high accuracy.•Experimental uncertainty has been accurately quantified.•Extreme values have been reported for various non-dimensional parameters.•Non-dimensional temperature separation increases with overall pressure ratio.•Results are expected to be used for CFD validation. In this paper we present high-accuracy experimental measurements of the performance characteristics of an optimised Ranque-Hilsch vortex tube of cylindrical counter-flow design. Although this is a relatively mature research area, the published high-accuracy experimental data with quantified measurement uncertainty is very limited. The purpose is to provide a reference data-set for CFD method validation and calibration. The vortex tube design is a performance-optimum based on existing literature. We characterize the temperature separation, energy separation, efficiency, and coefficients of performance for three inlet pressures (3.0 bar, 5.0 bar and 7.0 bar) and for atmospheric back pressure. Performance characteristics are presented as a function of cold gas mass fraction. The lowest non-dimensional cold-exit temperature (normalised by inlet temperature) was 0.87, the highest coefficient of performance (decrease in enthalpy flux of the cold stream normalized by work needed to compress air to the inlet pressure) was 0.137, and the highest isentropic efficiency (ratio of the actual energy lost by cold stream to energy that would have been lost in an isentropic expansion of the entire inlet stream from the inlet pressure to the cold-exit pressure) was 0.16.
ISSN:1359-4311
DOI:10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2024.123385