HILSCH-RANQUE VORTEX TUBE 2

[tommurphy73]

Hi,

I have been using google over the last few days to find some info on the HILSCH-RANQUE VORTEX TUBE. i am unable to find a good formula to calculate the cold and hot air temperature. I am interested in a variation on the usual design to supply cold air to the intake manifold on a car. Has anyone seen a scaled up version of a vortex tube which would supply a large volume of air.

regards Tom

 

[MikeHalloran]

You can throttle the hot air discharge to produce more flow from the cold air discharge, at a higher temperature.

Note that vortex tubes require a large volume of high pressure air at the inlet, and exhaust most of it at a much lower pressure and higher temperature at the hot air discharge, in order to produce a relatively modest flow of cold air at low pressure at the cold air discharge.

I.e., you will need to discharge as waste a _lot_ of hot air in order to get enough cold air to feed an engine, and you will need a major portion of the engine's output to drive the _huge_ air compressor to feed the tube.

Vortex tubes are relatively easy to make. I suggest you put together a few small ones in assorted sizes and feed them with shop air to get an idea of what they can and cannot do. As you scale them up, you'll run out of compressor pretty quickly.



Mike Halloran
NOT speaking for
DeAngelo Marine Exhaust Inc.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL, USA

 

[schmidtj86]

Yeah, one quote from a friend of mine, from a teacher of his: "You can't have a cold beer without plugging in the fridge." Of course this would mean during the summer, and the fridge doesn't have to be yours.

 

[PowerDubs]

What about having one plumbed into the intake, attached to a bottle of compressed air carried in the car?

I understand of course that said bottle wouldn't hold enough air to operate for more than a very short while, but would that not be enough to run say um 1320 feet?

 

[MikeHalloran]

A scuba tank holds 72 cubic feet of air. You'd probably need to blow off 60..70 of those through the hot end in order to get the remainder, chilled, out of the cold end.

I.e., you get 2..12 cubic feet of chilled air per charged scuba tank. How much does you car need to go 1320 feet?

One tank might be enough air for _you_, personally, on foot, to run the distance. If you have to carry the tank, you may need more air.







Mike Halloran
NOT speaking for
DeAngelo Marine Exhaust Inc.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL, USA

 

[VRMath]

There is no workable theory for vortex tube design. It's still an unsolved problem in that sense. The 50K temperature difference mentioned by Hilsch (below) and Herrada et al. (below) may be a limit. The following references might be of some help:

Singh, P. K., Tathgir, R. G., Gangacharyulu, D., & Grewal, G. S., 2004, An Experimental Performance Evaluation of Vortex Tube. IE India Journal 84, pp. 149-153.

Ahlborn, B. & Gordon, J. M., 2000, "The vortex tube as a classic thermodynamic refrigeration cycle." Journal of Appied Physics 88, pp. 3645-3653.

Herrada, M. A., Pérez-Saborid, M., & Barrero, A., 1999, "Thermal separation in near-axis boundary layers with intense swirl." Physics of Fluids vol. 11, pp. 3678-3687.

Fröhlingsdorf, W. & Unger, H., 1999, "Numerical investigation of the compressible flow and the energy separation in the Ranque-Hilsch vortex tube." International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer vol. 42, pp. 415-422.

Ahlborn, B., Keller, J. U., & Rebhan, E., 1998, "The Heat Pump in a Vortex Tube." Journal of Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics vol. 23, pp. 159-165.

Ahlborn, B. & Groves, S., 1997, "Secondary flow in a vortex tube." Fluid Dynamics Research vol. 21, pp. 73-86.

Kurosaka, M., Chu, J. Q., & Goodman, J. R., 1982, "Ranque-Hilsch Effect Revisited: Temperature Separation Traced to Orderly Spinning Waves or 'Vortex Whistle'." AIAA Paper No. 82-0952, 13 pp.

Chanaud, R. C., 1963, "Experiments Concerning the Vortex Whistle." The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America vol. 35, pp. 953-960.

Vonegut, B., 1954, "A Vortex Whistle." The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America vol. 26, pp. 18-20.

Hilsch, R., 1947, "The Use of the Expansion of Gases in a Centrifugal Field as Cooling Process." The Review of Scientific Instruments vol. 18, pp. 108-113.

 

[crysta1c1ear]

http://www.southstreet.freeserve.co.uk/rhvtmatl/rhvtinfo.htm