An investigation of temperature separation phenomenon in the vortex chamber

Abstract

Paper presented to the 10th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, Florida, 14-16 July 2014.

The vortex chamber is a simple device with no moving parts that separates compressed gas into a high temperature region and a low temperature region. Recently, vortex chamber is being received much attention but also high industrial demand because of its structural simplicity and better performance of the temperature separation, compared with the previous vortex tubes. In the present study, both experimental and numerical analysis has been carried out to investigate the temperature separation inside a vortex chamber. Working fluid enters the chamber through four tangential inlet ports and exits through one central exit port. To investigate the temperature separation phenomenon, static pressures and temperatures at several points inside the vortex chamber were measured using highly sensitive pressure transducers and thermocouples. Data obtained from experiments was used to verify the computational results. 3-D unsteady RANS equations were considered to simulate compressible flow inside the vortex chamber. Numerical results were observed to be in good agreement with experimental ones. Many hypotheses are discussed in terms of energy transfer mechanisms and Pressure Gradient Waves (PGW) in the paper.