PERFORMANCE ANALYSISOF VORTEX TUBE REFRIGERATOR

Abstract

A vortex tube is a Thermo-fluidic device, which generates cold and hot streams from a single injection of pressurized gas. Without any moving parts or chemical reaction within the tube, the interesting phenomenon of energy separation results only from fluid dynamic effects. The main part of a typical counter-flow vortex tube is a straight tube with a tangential injection, through which compressed gas is injected into the tube. There are two exits, located at different ends of a counter-flow vortex tube, or at the same end for a uniflow vortex tube. A control plug is positioned inside the tube away from the injection point, which has a smaller dimension than the inner diameter of the tube, and this allows the gas to escape from the small gap between the control plug and the tube When the compressed gas is injected into the tube tangentially at a high velocity, two streams with different temperatures will be generated and exhausted from the two exits of the tube. I n t he p r e s e n t wo r k Vo r t e x t u b e g e ne r a t o r i s f a br i c a t e d wi t h t h e he l p o f l a t he ma c h i ne , dr i l l i n g ma c h i ne a n d a r c we l di n g . Experiment is conducted with pressurized air as inlet from the air-compressor for three different tube lengths (54.61cm, 102.87cm, 119.38 cm) with inlet pressures of 50,100, 120 and 150 lb/in2 . Among three different tube lengths (54.61cm, 102. 87cm, 119. 38 cm) 54.61cm gives lowest temperature outlet(340c) and hot stream temperature as 380c with 360c atmospheric temperature.