Vortex Tubes Cooling With Compressed Air

Vortex tubes vortex tubes are an effective low cost solution to a wide variety of industrial spot and process cooling needs.

Vortex tubes cooling with compressed air.

Vortex tubes are pretty great because they can both heat and cool compressed air with no electricity or moving parts. Air that rotates around an axis like a tornado is called a vortex. Capable of providing up to 2 400 btu hr of cooling and achieving temperatures 50 c below the compressed air temperature the vortex tubes are commonly used for spot cooling cabinet cooling and machine cooling. Vortex tubes are a compact source of refrigeration and cooling with models ranging from 6 13 inches 150 330 mm long and cooling capacities ranging from 100 6000 btu hour 29 1757 watts.

The high speed air heats up as it spins along the inner walls of the tube toward the control valve. A vortex tube creates cold air and hot air by forcing compressed air through a generation chamber which spins the air at a high rate of speed 1 000 000 rpm into a vortex. The vortex tube takes compressed air and converts it to cold air as low as minus 50 f minus 46 c at one end and hot air at the other up to 260 f 127 c. However building one can be a little tricky.

Machine shops generally already use compressed air and a fast jet of cold air provides both cooling and removal of the chips produced by the tool. If cooling effect is important to the manufacturing application then the cold air flowing out of the vortex tube should be between 60 80. Vortex tubes are used for cooling of cutting tools lathes and mills both manually operated and cnc machines during machining. The vortex tube is well matched to this application.

Vortex tubes cool instantly relying on compressed air spinning in the tube to separate the air into cold and hot air streams. With no moving parts a vortex tube spins compressed air to separate the air into cold and hot air streams. While french physicist georges ranque is credited with inventing the vortex tube in 1930 itw vortec was the first company to develop and apply this phenomenon.