An Experimental Study on the Impact of Pressure Drop in the Ranque-Hilsch Vortex Tube
Abstract
A vortex tube converts a single stream of compressed gas into two outlet streams; one heated, and the other cooled. This phenomenon, referred to as energy separation, is not fully understood, thereby requires further experimentation and analysis. CFD can provide insight, however, such simulations require a complete set of information of the geometric, operational, and performance parameters of particular vortex tube experiments.
An experiment is developed to provide complete information for CFD simulations. The vortex tube under consideration is established by considering reported data from past studies and selecting parameters that yield significant energy separation. An experimental apparatus is developed that can precisely measure the flow properties at the inlet and outlets. In addition to providing operational and performance data for future CFD studies, the experiments conducted showed the magnitude of the energy separation is (at least partially) dependent on the pressure ratio between the inlet and the cold outlet.