Experimental analysis on vortex tube energy separation performance

Mohammad O. Hamdan, Ahmed Alawar, Emad Elnajjar & Waseem Siddique

Heat and Mass Transfer Wrme- und Stoffbertragung ISSN 0947-7411 Heat Mass Transfer DOI 10.1007/ s00231-011-0824-6

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Heat Mass Transfer DOI 10.1007/s00231-011-0824-6

ORIGINAL

Experimental analysis on vortex tube energy separation performance

Mohammad O. Hamdan Ahmed Alawar Emad Elnajjar Waseem Siddique

Received: 18 September 2010 / Accepted: 25 May 2011 Springer-Verlag 2011

Abstract The present study reports the effect of several operating parameters on the thermal performance of the vortex tube. The experimental results indicate that the inlet pressure and the cold fraction are the most signicant parameters inuencing the vortex tube performance. The experimental data point out that insulation has minimal effect on the vortex tube performance. The same inlet pressure tests show that energy separation increases as number of inlet nozzle increases. List of symbols COP Coefcient of performance D Vortex tube inner diameter, m h Enthalpy, kJ/kg Pin Inlet pressure, bar _h m Hot mass ow rate, kg/s _c m Cold mass ow rate, kg/s _ in m Inlet mass ow rate, kg/s RHVT RanqueHilsch vortex tube Th Hot outlet temperature, C Tc Cold outlet temperature, C Tin Inlet temperature, C DTh Temperature difference between the inlet and the hot outlet, DTh = Th - Tin DTc Temperature difference between the inlet and the cold outlet, DTc = Tin - Tc Greek symbols _ c =m _ in  Cold mass fraction; e m

1 Introduction The RanqueHilsch vortex tube (RHVT) is a thermal mechanical device that separates a compressed gas ow to two streams; one stream colder than the inlet ow while the other stream is hotter than the inlet ow. The vortex tube does not have any moving parts and the separation occurs due to swirl ow generation without requiring any external work or heat transfer. The vortex tube was rst discovered by Ranque [1, 2], a metallurgist and physicist who was granted a French patent for the device in 1932, and a United States patent in 1934. The vortex tube phenomenon was encountered by the French physics student Ranque while he was experimentally working with vortex tube pump in 1928. Later in 1945, Hilsch [3] conducted an experiment on vortex tube that focused on the thermal performance with different inlet pressure and different geometrical parameters. In the recent years it was known that vortex tube is a low cost and an effective solution for many cooling problems. The separation mechanism inside the vortex tube was not completely understood until today [4]. The ability to obtain either hot or cold ow streams using compressed gas, allowed the use of vortex tube in many engineering applications such as cooling of electronics, cooling of food, cooling of remens suit and cooling of machinery during operation. Despite its small capacity, the RHVT is very useful for certain thermal management applications because of its simplicity, compactness, light weight, robustness, reliability, low maintenance cost and safety [5]. The RHVT can be classied into two types [6]: (1) the counter-ow RHVT and (2) the uni-ow RHVT. In the counter ow RHVT type the cold ow move in the opposite direction with respect to the hot stream, while in the second type, the hot and cold streams ow in the same

M. O. Hamdan (&) A. Alawar E. Elnajjar W. Siddique Mechanical Engineering Department, United Arab Emirates University, P.O. Box 17555, Al-Ain, United Arab Emirates e-mail: MohammadH@uaeu.ac.ae

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direction. In general, the counter-ow RHVT is recommended over the uni-ow RHVT for its efcient energy separation [6]. Vortex tube is covered extensively in literatures through experimental and numerical analysis. The experimental work of Nimbalkar and Muller [7] indicated that there is an optimum diameter of the cold end orice for achieving maximum energy separation. Also, the results [7] showed that the maximum value of energy separation was always reachable at a 60% cold fraction irrespective of the orice diameter and the inlet pressure. The optimum diameter to the length ratio of the hot side was investigated by Dincer et al. [8, 9]. The vortex tube performance was investigated for three different working gases: air, oxygen and nitrogen and the results were reported using streakline visualizations in a vortex tube made of Perspex [10]. Aydn and Baki [10] indicated that inlet pressure and cold mass fraction were the most important operating parameters. The effect of vortex entrance condition is reported in [11] which indicated that vortex tube can be enhanced by rounding the entrance. It was reported [6] that cooling the vortex tube can enhance the cooling capability by 59%. Xue and Arjomandi [12] reported that the vortex angle has direct effect on vortex tube and that smaller vortex angles demonstrate a larger temperature difference and better performance for the heating efciency of the vortex tube. Scientists worked in improving vortex tube by redesign the nozzle gas inlet and utilizing diffuser vortex tube which showed reasonable enhancement [13]. A modication to vortex tube was proposed [14] by introducing double-circuit vortex tube which showed enhancement in the vortex tube performance. Other scientist modeled and analyzed the vortex tube using numerical analysis with different turbulent model. Numerical study showed acceptable agreement with published data [1518]. A full discussion of 3D numerical study is presented in [16] which report maximum COP of 0.59 as a heat pump and 0.83 as a refrigerator which was m _ h hh dened as for heat engine as COPHE m _ in hin and for
_ c hc m refrigerator as COPR m _ in hin . Behera et al. [16] reported numerically that the secondary ow degrade the performance of the vortex tube. It was reported numerically that the magnitude of velocity angle is reversely proportional to the vortex pipe diameter [18]. The current study investigates the effect of four parameters on the vortex tube which are (1) the inlet pressure, (2) number of inlet nozzles, (3) the location of the vortex stopper, shown in Fig. 1c, and (4) the vortex tube insulation condition. The performance of vortex tube in energy separation is reported using outlet temperatures and cold mass fraction.

2 Experimental setup A two-dimensional cross section of used vortex tube is shown in Fig. 1. Room temperature compressed air is used as working uid at different inlet pressure values. The compressed air enters in the middle of the vortex tube to a chamber that distributes the air into multiple inlet nozzles that promote vortex ow generation within the vortex generator, Fig. 1b. The vortex ow get separated to two outlets where hot air leaves from the outer perimeter of the vortex while cold air leaves from the center of vortex at the opposite direction as shown in Fig. 1a. The schematic diagram of the experimental setup is shown in Fig. 2. The compressed air is provided through compressor storage tank to assure uniform pressure with minimum variation. The storage tank size is 1 m3 and the system is kept running for half an hour before conducting the test to allow system to warm up and tank temperature to stabilize. The compressor maximum rated pressure is 12 bars, even though all runs where for inlet pressure of 5 bars or below. The compressed gas passed through a dehumidier and particle separation lter to assure the use of clean dry air. The air is expanded in the vortex tube chamber and separated into hot air stream and cold air stream. The cold stream in the central region ows out of the tube through the central orice nearer to the inlet nozzle, while the hot stream in the outer annulus leaves the tube through other outlet far from the inlet. The ow rate of the inlet air is regulated through ow rotometer valve while the pressure is controlled using a pressure controller that is attached on the compressor tank outlet. The volumetric ow rates of the inlet and cold streams are both measured by a glass ow rotometers with uncertainty of 0.5 L/s. The temperatures of the inlet and outlet ows are measured with three thermocouples. In the present study, the vortex tube is made of stainless steel with inner diameter of 10 mm. The whole length of the tube is 137 mm. The outlet diameter of the cold side is 4.5 mm and hot side end is around 8 mm. The inlet ow rate is controlled through the ow meter valve which implicitly determines the inlet pressure. The temperature is measured suing type-K thermocouple with uncertainty of 0.3C. In this experiment, different inlet pressure sets were used in the test ranging from 2 to 5 bars with room inlet temperature. All experiments are conducted following a specic procedure which includes running the compressor for half hour to allow reaching steady state temperature of inlet compressed air. The pressure inside the pressurized tank is kept higher than 6 bar while a check valve was used to assure continuous uniform inlet pressure of 5 bars to the experiment. Incase pressure drop inside the tank below 6

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Heat Mass Transfer Fig. 1 The vortex tube; a A 2-D cross-section of the vortex tube, b vortex generator, and c vortex stopper

Fig. 2 A schematic diagram of the test bed with point of data collection

bars the test is hold till pressure is build up inside the air tank. A shot plastic pipe connection was used at the cold/hot outlet to allow xing the thermocouple and to reduce the effect of heat transfer. The temperature was logged over period of time using portable handheld data logger with eight data inputs. A Borden tube pressure gage with 0.2 bar uncertainty is used to measure the inlet pressure.

3 Results and discussion The behavior of the vortex tube when cold and hot outlets are brought to the same outlet pressure is shown in Fig. 3 which shows that the cold and hot outlet temperature versus the cold mass fraction (e). The present experimental

data, Fig. 3, shows a good qualitative agreement with earlier published data [3, 6] considering the geometry and the inlet conditions differences. As expected and reported in literature, there is a non-monotonic relation between outlets temperature and cold mass fraction and that there is an optimum cold mass fraction for maximum hot temperature and minimum cold temperature. As shown if Fig. 3, the optimum temperature at the cold outlet is (DTc = -19.9C at e = 0.098) and at the hot outlet is (DTh = 5.6C at e = 0.098) which mean it does not occur at the same cold mass fraction. The effect of pressure on the optimum condition of the vortex tube is shown in Fig. 4. It is clear that inlet pressure increases the maximum hot outlet temperature and decreases the minimum outlet temperature; hence pressure has direct effect on promoting separation of the energy of

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Fig. 3 The temperature of cold and hot outlets versus cold mass fraction for 5 bar inlet pressure, 26C inlet temperature and 6 swirling jets

the ow of two streams, as shown in Fig. 4a, b. Derived from Fig. 4, it is clear that the optimum cold mass fraction for cooling and heating depends on the operating inlet pressure. It is found that inlet pressure has minimum effect on the optimum cold mass for the cold stream as shown in Fig. 4a. Figure 4c shows that as inlet pressure increase colder stream is achieved but almost at the same mass fraction. Hence for cold stream, it is clear that inlet pressure has minimum effect on optimum cold mass fraction.
Fig. 4 The effect of inlet pressure at 26C inlet temperature on the; a minimum cold temperature, b maximum hot temperature, c cold outlet ow and d hot outlet ow

Figure 4d shows that inlet pressure has strong effect on the optimum cold mass fraction for the hot stream and that as inlet pressure increases the hot outlet temperature increases and optimum cold mass fraction increases too. The gure shows that maximum and minimum outlet temperatures are linearly related to the inlet pressure, with more noticeable effect on the peak temperature of the cold stream compared to the hot stream. It is common to use multiple jets to generate the vortex ow inside the vortex generator show in Fig. 2b. The effect of jet angle was discussed in [12] which shows that smaller angel or tangent jets generate the maximum energy separation. The effect of number of jet for the same angle is shown in Fig. 5, which shows that as number of jets decrease from 6 to 3 jets the optimum cold mass fraction increases (from 10 to 22%) while cold outlet temperature increase marginally (by less than 1.5 degree). It is clear that adding more jets produce colder and hotter outlet streams nevertheless it does not mean it produces better cooling or heating load. This indicated that there is an optimum number of jets that can produce optimum cooling and heating load which needs further investigation and was not the focus of this study. The single inlet nozzle shows lower performance compare to 6 and 3 jets vortex generator and this could be due to the uniformity of the vortex since it is expected that as number of inlet nozzles increases, the vortex become more stable and uniform.

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(b)

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Fig. 5 The effect of number of nozzles at 5 bar inlet pressure and 26C inlet temperature on the cold outlet ow and the hot outlet ow

Fig. 7 The effect of insulation of the steel vortex tube at 5 bar inlet pressure and 26C inlet temperature on both cold outlet and hot outlet

supports the idea that there is a secondary circulation inside the vortex tube which enhances the energy separation such in this case it is clear that as vortex stopper move far from the vortex generator better cooling is achieved. The distance from A to B and from B to C is equal to *7D. The effect of insulation on vortex tube is shown in Fig. 7 for cold/hot outlet stream. The results show that insulation has minor effect on the performance of the vortex tube which suggests that heat loss through the vortex tube is minimal and that most of the heat exchange takes place inside the vortex tube where maximum temperature difference is occurring between the cold center and external hot vortex. It is reported in [6] that cooling the vortex tube using water jacket would promote cooling by 59% which agreed with our nding since natural cooling (or no insulation case) would have even lower effect than 59% on the vortex tube performance.
Fig. 6 The effect of number of swirl stopper at 5 bar inlet pressure and 26C inlet temperature on the cold outlet and hot outlet

4 Conclusions The effect of vortex stopper is shown in Fig. 6. The vortex stopper, shown in Fig. 1b, is a radial n that allows the ow to move axially in the vortex tube while stopping the vortex and secondary ow motion. Three different locations, (A, B and C) are shown in Fig. 1a, of the vortex stopper are investigated and reported in Fig. 6. It is clear that the location of vortex stopper has an effect on the vortex tube performance and that as stopper move away from the vortex generator, colder temperature is achieved. This indicates, agreed with published work [8, 9], that the length of the vortex chamber is directly affecting the vortex tube performance. The vortex tube length to diameter ratio is very important design parameter which is not investigated in this work and need more exploration. Figure 6 A series of experiments are conducted to investigate the performance of the vortex tube under several design parameters mainly; (1) inlet pressure, (2) cold mass fraction, (3) number of inlet nozzles, (4) vortex stopper location and (5) insulation. The following were concluded from the experimental data: 1. The inlet pressure is the necessary driving force for the energy separation.

Experiments show that the higher the inlet pressure, the greater the temperature difference of the outlet streams. 2. The cold fraction is an important parameter inuencing the performance of the energy separation in the vortex

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3.

4.

5.

tube and there is an optimum value to obtain maximum temperature difference and it is not the same for maximum energy load separation. The effect of number of nozzle is very important. For constant inlet pressure test, it is clear that increasing number of nozzle increase the temperature difference between inlet and outlets. Also the study indicates that there could be optimum number of jet for maximum load that require further investigation. The vortex tube length (vortex stopper location) has direct effect on the performance of the vortex tube. The data shows that as vortex stopper moves far from the vortex generator the energy separation performance increase which is true as long the distanced moved is below 14 times the vortex tube diameter (which was the investigated range). Insulation has minimal effect on vortex tube cooling or heating capabilities.

Acknowledgments The authors would like to acknowledge the support provided by United Arab Emirates University. This work was nancially supported by the Research Affairs at the United Arab Emirates University under a contract no. 01-05-7-11/09.

References
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