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A Three-Dimensional CFD Investigation of Nozzle Effect on the Vortex Tube Performance

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Recent Advances in Fluid Dynamics

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Mechanical Engineering ((LNME))

Abstract

Ranque-Hilsch vortex tube is a mechanical instrument used for cooling and heating purposes in various engineering applications. A vortex tube utilizes compressed fluid to generate hot and cool effect simultaneously. The size of the vortex tube is very small which makes it easy to operate and carry. The present work deals with a three-dimensional (3D) computational work to examine the vortex tube performance studying number of nozzles. The investigation carried out for nitrogen (N2) gas as a working fluid for an operating pressure condition of 8 bar. Three different cases have been (nozzle number 1, 2, and 4) selected to study the nozzle effect over the performance and temperature separation effect. A turbulence model std. k-ε selected to predict the temperature values at hot and cold junction. The flow characteristics like axial velocity and tangential velocity also discussed in this work for nitrogen gas. It is found that the highest magnitude of temperature separation can be obtained with two number of nozzle. In addition, as the nozzle number of vortex tube increases, the performance decreases.

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Abbreviations

L :

Tube length, mm

D :

Tube diameter, mm

VT :

Vortex tube

3D :

Three-dimensional

ΔTcold :

Difference of cold exit and inlet, K

ΔThot :

Difference of hot exit and inlet, K

µ :

Cold mass fraction

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Correspondence to Nitin Bagre .

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Bagre, N., Parekh, A.D., Patel, V.K. (2023). A Three-Dimensional CFD Investigation of Nozzle Effect on the Vortex Tube Performance. In: Banerjee, J., Shah, R.D., Agarwal, R.K., Mitra, S. (eds) Recent Advances in Fluid Dynamics . Lecture Notes in Mechanical Engineering. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3379-0_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3379-0_10

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-19-3378-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-19-3379-0

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