Investigations of Energy Separation Effect in Vortex Tube for Natural Gases

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate fixed composition natural gases including N2, CH4 and C2H4 energy separation effect in vortex tube. Energy separation phenomena of those gases were investigated by means of three-dimensional Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) method. Flow fields of natural gases in fixed inlet boundary conditions were simulated. The results main factors were found that affect the energy separation with cold mass fraction being 0.7 and pressure drop ratio being 3.90. At the same time, this paper has illustrated the effects and tendencies of energy separation with gases in the tube under the same cold mass flow fraction and cold pressure ratio. The results show mixture gases total temperature difference effect is unchanged varied with the cold mass fraction; CH4% has no effect on the vortex cold end temperature separation, but varied of CH4% has an influence in total temperature and hot end separation effect; total temperature separation effect of CH4% was divided into two sections, one is0%-80%, and the other 80%-100%.

Effect of Physical Properties of a Gas on the Refrigeration Temperature Drop of Vortex Tubes Used in Oil and Gas Fields

“…They demonstrated that certain working gas properties, including inlet pressure, specific heat ratio, and thermal conductivity, play a significant role in energy separation in vortex tubes. Wang et al investigated the energy separation performance of different gases in a vortex tube using computational fluid dynamics; their approach was focused on the number of atoms contained in the gas molecules. Their results indicated that an enhanced temperature separation effect was observed for gas molecules that had low specific heat capacities and contained only one or two atoms.…”