The effects of orifice nozzle number and nozzle made of polyamide plastic and aluminum with different inlet pressures on heating and cooling performance of counter flow Ranque-Hilsch vortex tubes: An experimental investigation

In this paper, the effects of the orifice nozzle number and the inlet pressure on heating and cooling performance of a counter flow Ranque-Hilsch type vortex tube (RHVT) (L/D ration is 10) are investigated by using air and oxygen as a fluid via an experimental method. Five orifices with two, three, four, five and six nozzles are made from the polyamide plastic and aluminum. The object of this research is to observe thermal behavior of air and oxygen, which are passing through an RHVT. Using two different fluids for each one of the orifices (nozzle numbers), inlet pressure is varied between 150 kPa and 700 kPa by increasing 50 kPa for each step and comparison is made between these two fluids by holding the cold mass fraction constant at 0.36. We show that the temperature gradient between the cold and hot fluid decreases whenever the orifice nozzle number increases. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd and IIR. All rights reserved.