EASY ENGINEERING - How Does a Vortex Tube Work and What are the Parameters
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- Опубліковано 5 сер 2024
- A vortex tube is a useful spot cooling device when used properly and one understands the parameters within which they operate most efficiently.
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who is here because of LTT ?
Me
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After watching this, maybe LTT might have wanted to try having a higher flow rate when blowing through the CPU cooler.
CPU coolers work better with the air moving. If LTT had their cold end below -20c they're not going to get good cooling?
Just an idea. Might be wrong
Very beautifully done! Exciting!
I dont see an explaination of why the energy of the air is transmitted on one end vs the other.
Correct - there are various theories but as yet none really explains it. My favorite theory is transfer due to to angular momentum conservation. But you are correct, no explanation because it is yet to be proven why it happens.
@@mycutebutt1000 I concur with your theory. Obviously thermally homogeneous air is input into the device, so the energy it would be extracting from the air would be decreasing the airs velocity and transferring it into the tube walls. It's just annoying that people seem to glaze over the operation and just say "they just work" as an explanation.
It works the same way as any other refrigerator. There is a pressure gradient from the outside of the vortex to the inside. So the thermodynamic equilibrium is going to result in cooler air on the inside and hotter on the outside. That's no different to why the air at high altitudes is so much colder - if air is moving from high pressure to lower, it has to expand and cool. If it moves from lower pressure to higher, it has to compress and heat up. If air circulates between high and low pressure areas for whatever reason, that's basically just your refrigeration cycle. Finally, the pressure difference only gives you so much temperature difference between the hot air on the outside and cold air inside of the vortex, but because you have the length of the tube to work with and hot and cold air flow in opposite direction, these small differences add up along the length of the tube. So you end up with the hot end getting really hot and cold end really cold, even though in any given cross section, the difference between hot and cold air isn't that high. And, of course, there's the question of why there is a pressure difference in the first place. And that comes down to two main factors. First of all, the air is moving so fast that there is actually a substantial pressure from centrifugal force. Second, the air on the inside actually rotates at a faster rate, both due to aforementioned conservation of angular momentum, and the fact that outer air is slowed down by the surface drag. This gives you the Bernoulli effect pressure drop in the middle of the vortex.
There are many theories on why this happens and that is a matter for physicists to debate.
@@mycutebutt1000 Hence why I'm weighing in as a physicist. The nuances and which effects dominate, might be matter of discussion, but the basics are as I've outlined.
I am experimenting with vortex cooling. My occupation we put people into an "oven" to work . Roughly 150 degrees F. They also wear chemical and fire protection. The bulk weight limits more body worn devices. Currently we use a breathing air supply to a manifold that directs air to a respirator and the other, a body cooled manifold. The body cool supply is directed through a vortex cooler before going to the body. The compressor that supplies is industrial. But as you say, flow rate and temperature make a difference!
I installed a vortex cooler outside the "oven" prior to breathing air supply hose in addition to the body worn vortex of the oven entrant. This worked to make things cooler. However, you must dial in the vortex tube adjustment to the optimal settings. The breathing air respirators are air on demand. So, the more you adjust for flow out of cooling tubes, the more "assistance" one loses in breathing due to pressure drop. Wish we could be approved to lose these air-on-demand regulators. I need people to be able to breathe freely and remain cool as possible while performing work.
We can offer some assistance on this. Please send your details to technical@nexflow.com and one of our technical support personnel will get back to you
The issue with conventional explanations for the VTs operation ( bladeless adabiatic turbine ) is that there isn't any reason we know that (1) the air should remain spinning or (2) it should return down the core in such an organized fashion. The heat transfer being somehow solely convective is also a big problem because dwell time is so low. Also, if a vacuum is present in the central inlet, that SHOULD be possible to create without having to "swirl" the air, but that doesn't work at all.
In other words, although we know how to tune these somewhat, we still do not know how they work, despite claims to the contrary.
I am not sure what you write is completely correct, although very true that there are many theoretical explanations for why they work. Heat transfer being conductive is not a basic assumption for the very reason you state. I tend to prefer the angular momentum energy transfer approach but again, there are different theories.
Hello Chris. Actually despite being in existence for a century, very few people still know what vortex tube is.
Hello there,
Very informative video, does the temperature of the compressed air going in change the cold output? I.e if I use 16 degress Celsius compressed air vs 30 degrees compressed air?
Any help would be much appreciated
Yes - the vortex tube is designed to give a certain temperature drop from whatever the input temperature is.
@@NEXFLOW wow really?
Sorry just to clarify, I am using a vortex needle that is currently giving me -12 when ambient in my work shop is 12 degrees Celsius or near the compressor.
So In the summer when my work shop reaches around 25 degrees Celsius will I still have the same -12 degrees Celsius.
Does flow rate from the cold end get affected buy this?
Sorry for all the questions and I appreciate the help!
This is amazing technology which I have become obsessed about.
Kind regards
Lewis
It is unlikely that the actual compressed air changes very much with your shop environment as it always gets hot when the air is compressed (and then usually cooled to a certain temperature. This is probably why you do not see a significant if any change in temperature output. Flow rate would not change. Send any detailed questions to sales@nexflow.com and can give more detailed answers.
@@NEXFLOW thanks so much for this info!
Explain other parameters also..like humidity of air, diameter of tubes, pressure of compressed air, valve controlled area,..PLZZ. atleast reply me with this relations here better than to make a vedio..I want it urgently
As long as compressed air is filtered, it does not matter. The compressed air pressure will vary performance and we have a performance chart that shows it on our web site. Please see the web site at nexflow.com and simply send your information to us with details of what you want as well as your contact details and location
You all missed the boat. Where does cooling air come from. When you compress air you add energy and increase it's pressure. Now you have relatively warm high pressure air. Add a small restriction, orifice and the end of the pipe, the air velocity increases, pressure decreases, air looses energy as it dissipated to atmospheric pressure. Looses energy means it cools off. So the actually cooling affect is created at the small price, air restriction causeing the air to leak out and rapidly expand, loose energy, cooling the once high pressure warm compressed air.
In other words, just like when you let air out of a warm car tire, as the high pressure car tire air escapes and expands to atmospheric pressure the air inside cools.
This is not a very efficient kethode of cooling because it takes a lot of energy to compress air, your simply bleeding the compressed air out, which the compressor has to start and run to keep the compressed air system pressure up
Cooling is controlled by energy laws, you can't create it destroy energy. So for cooling to take place all your doing is moving heat, energy from one place to another.
In this case energy from electricity is used, moved from the electricity through a compressor compressing air moving energy to the air. Then you let the compressed air out, it expands, energy is dispersed cooling the air ...
Sorry but you not correct. The cooling is NOT from the pressure drop. I strongly suggest you look at the plethora of video's and other studies on vortex tubes and you will understand..
LTT
I think it should be common knowledge by know how cooling works... taking hot air away and replacing it with cooler air... the confusing part is how does thee air invert itself without destabilization, one thing that he doesn't explain, so on to another vid that shows how it actually works...
Not sure what you are commenting on here. The video is strictly on how the cold air and hot air are created with a vortex tube, and the parameters on the efficiency and temperature range - nothing is replaced, As for using it, that is another video of course.
@@mycutebutt1000 It is unfortunate that physics is hard for you, but to make it easy on you, when you use active cooling, hot air is moved and replaced be cooler air... thus correcting your first statement... then second is my actual question where he does not go on to explain how the inversion happens. it's like "let's skip that part cause we don't know either" thing
Hello again. We mean the same thing,. Sorry for any grammatical missteps. As for the unexplained part, it does not matter at a practical use level. For your own desire for deeper understanding, there are a plethora of published works and videos. Most contradict each other and are not necessarily correct. It serves no useful purpose to regurgitate them here. Please do have fun but we suggest you be critical of what you find as much as you are critical of not getting the answer you want here. We remain active in research with educational institutions on the technology that hopefully will yield results to benefit everyone.
You all missed the boat. Where does cooling air come from. When you compress air you add energy and increase it's pressure. Now you have relatively warm high pressure air. Add a small restriction, orifice and the end of the pipe, the air velocity increases, pressure decreases, air looses energy as it dissipated to atmospheric pressure. Looses energy means it cools off. So the actually cooling affect is created at the small price, air restriction causeing the air to leak out and rapidly expand, loose energy, cooling the once high pressure warm compressed air.
In other words, just like when you let air out of a warm car tire, as the high pressure car tire air escapes and expands to atmospheric pressure the air inside cools.
@@airgliderz, then why do we need vortex here? Obviously it’s more efficient, but how? Would Bernoulli equation alone explain that?