Abstract :

The Vortex Tube, Or Ranque–Hilsch Vortex Tube, Is A Simple Device With No Moving Parts That Separates A Stream Of Compressed Gas Into A Cold And A Hot Stream. Its Compactness, Reliability And Absence Of Refrigerants Make It Attractive For Spot Cooling, Process Cooling, Cabinet Cooling And Gas Conditioning, But Its Low Efficiency Has Limited Wider Use. This Paper Evaluates The Performance Of A Counter-flow Vortex Tube Using A MATLAB-based Thermodynamic Parametric Model That Couples A Choked-nozzle Mass-flow Relation, An Energy Balance Between The Two Exit Streams And Empirical Dependences Of The Temperature Separation On Inlet Pressure, Cold Mass Fraction, Length-to-diameter Ratio (L/D) And Nozzle Number. Inlet Pressures Of 2–6 Bar (gauge) And Cold Mass Fractions Of 0.1–0.9 Were Considered With Air Supplied At 293 K. The Cold-end Temperature Drop Peaked Near A Cold Fraction Of 0.3 And Rose From 25.0 K At 2 Bar To 48.3 K At 6 Bar; At 5 Bar The Maximum Was 43.3 K, Giving A Cold-exit Temperature Of About 250 K. The Hot-end Temperature Rise Increased Monotonically With Cold Fraction, Reaching 50.4 K At 0.8. The Cooling Capacity Peaked At A Cold Fraction Of 0.5, Rising From 34 W At 2 Bar To 154 W At 6 Bar, While The Cooling Coefficient Of Performance Remained Low At 0.11–0.12 And Almost Independent Of Pressure. An L/D Near 20 And Four Or More Nozzles Gave The Best Separation. The Results Give Practical Guidance For Selecting The Operating Point Of A Vortex Tube According To Whether Maximum Temperature Drop Or Maximum Cooling Capacity Is Required.

Published:

04-11-2026

Issue:

Vol. 26 No. 11 (2026)

Page Nos:

71-78

Section:

Articles

License:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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