Computational study of temperature separation for a three-dimensional vortex tube with cold exit diameter and nozzle number variation
Ravi Kant Singh, Achintya Kumar Pramanick, Subhas Chandra Rana
Abstract
Present work is intended to discuss the computational analysis of vortex tube (VT) with inlet pressure (3–5.5 bar), the number of inlet nozzles as 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7, different turbulence models, and varying cold exit diameter as 4, 5, 6 and 7 mm of VT taking air as working fluid on the temperature separation performance of VT. The simulation is performed with ANSYS17.1 FLUENT software using different turbulence models and validated with the experimental result. It is concluded that the standard k-ε turbulent model shows a promising result than other turbulent models used for the study. The study has been performed on the VT for the same to obtain the optimum cold exit diameter (dc), i.e. 5 mm, best-suited nozzle for VT, and the optimum inlet pressure is 5.5 bar. The results of optimum cold exit diameter show an increment of 10.65% in cooling performance of VT than the previous experimental study. The cold temperature gradient for dc = 5mm is 42.02 K which is the highest among all the cold exit diameters considered.