Hilsch vortex tube

[Jetijs]

Greg, that's a great looking tube And your results are far more better than mine
I decided not to spend any more money on this, because you can buy one of these for just under 200$. Maybe someday when I have some spare money I will just buy one and examine it closey. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Nevertheless, it was an interesting project

[gmeast]

interesting project

Greg, that's a great looking tube And your results are far more better than mine
I decided not to spend any more money on this, because you can buy one of these for just under 200$. Maybe someday when I have some spare money I will just buy one and examine it closey. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Nevertheless, it was an interesting project

Hi Jetijs,

Here, here! The energy exchange mechanism is what caught my eye, as I recall. I I was interested in exploring non-refrigerant air conditioning.

How do you pronounce you handle, anyway ... "Jetijs" ? My mouth goes through all sorts of weird contortions trying to pronounce it ... je-ti-js, j-et-ij-s, j-e-t-i-j-s ... ahhhhh!

Peace,

Greg

[everwiser]

A company I used to work & design for used vortex tubes to cool the probes we used for gas sampling systems in smoke stacks at pulp & paper mills. They're interesting devices but not very efficient when you take into consideration the amount of air you're dumping through one. You'll spend more on energy making the compressed air than you'll get useful heating/cooling air out. If I remember correctly, we got our tubes from ITW Vortec who has various sizes with differing air requirements.

You could get some very cool temperatures out when you restricted the exhaust (the hot side) but it was a balancing act. If you have the hot side restricted too much and you're forcing more ambient temp air out with the cold air and if the exhaust is not restricted enough, you loose a lot of volume of the cold air (even though its very cold). Setting the hot-side exhaust flow just slightly less than the cold side's flow netted the best performance but as stated before, you're using a lot of compressed air.

These devices aren't usually used "full-time" because they're so wasteful of compressed air unless (like paper mills) a place makes their own compressed air as a byproduct of their process. Paper mills generate a lot of their own power and compressed air using steam created in their various process boilers which are burning liquors made from the various wood byproducts.

[Jetijs]

Hi Jetijs,

How do you pronounce you handle, anyway ... "Jetijs" ? My mouth goes through all sorts of weird contortions trying to pronounce it ... je-ti-js, j-et-ij-s, j-e-t-i-j-s ... ahhhhh!

Peace,

Greg

It is pronounced just like the word "yeti", you know, the Bigfoot. Only add an extra "s" on the end. Yetis, this is the closest thing of how it should sound

[byjoveoldchap]

Ok, I installed a cone on the hot end. But this did not improve anything. All the air still flows out of the hot end holes and the cold end hole still sucks air in. Maybe I need to restrict the air flow from the hot side to some degree?

Hi JETSIS,

I seem to remember that the cone should have a flat area, not pointed, to reflect the inner spiral of cold air backwards. The hot air escapes around the circumference gap of cone.

The one I built years ago wasn't successful, but those are the details I remember.

[byjoveoldchap]

Hi all,

These are some old reference images I found from my archives. The pictures show some basic relationships I think.

Greg

Well done Greg,

these are the pictures I remember when I attempted to build one years ago... [without success unfortunately].

I do remember this technique being shewn on BBC's 'Tomorrows World' program, many years ago. The inventor used the hot side for cooking food and the cool side for refridgeration and it was illustrated/suggested as supplying an entire house!

[Vortex]

The Ranque-Hilsch Vortex Tube web links

http://jnaudin.free.fr/html/vtxtech.htm

[Vortex]

New Energy Technologies the MAGAZINE
See the last issue #23, "VORTEX TUBES
IN THE INNOVATION PROCESS" article starts on page 11.

Has more information about vortex tubes in one place than I've ever seen before.
Quote below is speaking about a vortex tube. energy in verses energy out.
(and this is only the hot side.. you still have the cold side)

Fig. 2 is diagram of kinetic energy.
Estimated effect for 1000K hot half of an air mass is an over-unity mode of operation with efficiency 167%. ...
There are no fundamental prohibitions for this technology to develop fuelless power generators.

[Tom Booth]

I was hoping to find a discussion here about the Vortex Tube, and located this thread. Unfortunately many of the links are dead and photos missing.

I have just recently become interested in this device and tried building a couple.

This one is working a little:



The method for injecting the air streams is a little different. I used some very fine capillary tubing from an old air conditioner.

So far I'm getting only a very slight temperature difference. The hot side can become pleasantly warm while the cold side gets rather cool but nothing too dramatic.

I wasn't getting any temperature difference at all until after I cut about an inch off the "Hot" tube end on the theory that this has something to do with standing waves set up within the tube, like a vibrating guitar string, or rather the guitar body itself as a resonant cavity, drum, bell, wind chime tubes etc.

There are many different possible ratios between pipe inside diameter and length that might conceivably produce some effect but many more in between that theoretically wouldn't work due to being non-resonating.

After building the tube in the photo above and getting completely negative results I re-checked my measurements and found that I had somehow miss-measured and inadvertently cut the Hot tube pipe an inch or so too long.

When I corrected this it started working.

I've been able to get some noticeable temperature difference with as little as 30 PSI, but it works better at full pressure (about 120 PSI - as much as my shop compressor can produce)

I've also read that metal is a poor choice of material. i.e. it is easier to get good results by making the thing out of PVC tubing.

I would be interested to know if anyone else has noticed a correlation between the various recommended vortex tube size ratios and the musical scale ?

An old document says the ratio for the vortex tube should be 1:32 (ID:Length of Hot Pipe) which in a musical scale would be a full range of harmonics. I've noticed that some commercial vortex tubes also seem to be at or very close to a 1:8 ratio (one octave: 1-do 2-re 3-me 4-fa 5-so 6-la 7-te 8-do) 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64,...

In almost every case where I have been able to find specific measurements provided it looks like this musical scale type ratio for a "resonant cavity" has some correspondence to what works in a vortex tube.

I went out and bought a few lengths of PVC pipe and some fittings and such yesterday and so have plenty of material for experimenting.

I would like to test this by, for example, starting out with an extra long tube and then gradually trim it down a little at a time and see if this "standing wave" theory actually holds water.

[Stealth]

vortex theory

That is an interesting theory. I am not sure anyone knows what all happens in a vortex except maybe Schauberger. If you observe a fast moving river, where an obstacle partially blocks the flow of the river, it increases speed and pressure in that section. After it has exited the obstacle, it creates a vortex, where the increased speed and pressure start a spinning action where the exiting water is combining with the incoming water. This vortex whirlpool creates a vacuum of sorts and pulls all materials in close proximity into it. Any medium in a vortex is subjected to high speed and pressure and this rapid acceleration can very easily cause sound waves which could produce standing waves. A tornado has a whistling sound that can be heard for long distances. If we could harness and control a vortex in a machine of some type, it could produce more than enough power to accomodate any usage we might have. I have always considered the colder, denser air to be the key to self powering one. If we could reintroduce it into the vortex at the precise point, would it increase many times its present strength? Good Luck. stealth

[MonsieurM]

That is an interesting theory. I am not sure anyone knows what all happens in a vortex except maybe Schauberger. If you observe a fast moving river, where an obstacle partially blocks the flow of the river, it increases speed and pressure in that section. After it has exited the obstacle, it creates a vortex, where the increased speed and pressure start a spinning action where the exiting water is combining with the incoming water. This vortex whirlpool creates a vacuum of sorts and pulls all materials in close proximity into it. Any medium in a vortex is subjected to high speed and pressure and this rapid acceleration can very easily cause sound waves which could produce standing waves. A tornado has a whistling sound that can be heard for long distances. If we could harness and control a vortex in a machine of some type, it could produce more than enough power to accomodate any usage we might have. I have always considered the colder, denser air to be the key to self powering one. If we could reintroduce it into the vortex at the precise point, would it increase many times its present strength? Good Luck. stealth

I do like very much your explanation

[Tom Booth]

I've been thinking about the fact that my shop air compressor has cooling fins to dissipate "waste heat". In a sense, the compressed air going to the vortex tube has already gone through a refrigeration process.

By being compressed into a tank the air is made to give up an enormous amount of heat/energy. Letting that air expand through anything, or just into the open air will cause a drop in temperature, but I am wondering what the effect would be if the lost heat from the process of compressing the air into a tank were not lost.

That is, suppose a compressor were to compress ambient air directly into the vortex tube - or alternatively - directly into a very well insulated tank so that no (or very little) heat was lost during the compression process.

The tube between my compressor and the tank that holds the compressed air gets extremely hot, much too hot to touch, whenever the compressor is running. Very much much more energy is lost at that point, I think, than one could ever hope to get back from a vortex tube using air that has already been compressed and allowed to cool back down to ambient. But suppose the compressed air were fed directly to the vortex tube from the compressor before any heat was lost ?

Now if the vortex tube could separate out THAT heat, i.e. the "waste heat" from the compressor, then this would be heat taken out of the ambient PLUS would it not still be possible to utilize the COLD produced as well as the residual compressed air leaving the vortex tube ?

But I'm guessing that if the vortex tube had very HOT air fed into it directly from the compressor it would not be able to bring that air back down to the very cold temperatures it normally would. On the other hand, from what I understand these things can be stacked so that the cold air exiting one vortex tube can be piped directly into a second vortex tube so perhaps this is possible.

It seems to me that such ambient heat extracted (and amplified to even higher temperatures by such a compressor / vortex tube / heat exchanger type set up along with the potential for producing extreme cold as well, without any additional moving parts could produce a temperature differential to run a Stirling "Temperature Differential" Engine.

But would it be possible for the engine to produce more energy than the compressor consumes ? I'm thinking it might as the ambient heat extracted is actually indirect solar energy that is just being concentrated in such a way as to be able to utilize it. i.e. this is no more a violation of the second law of thermodynamics than damming a river or setting up a wind generator or otherwise utilizing indirect solar energy, or is it ?

I guess I'm just looking at all this "waste heat" being thrown away to compress the air for the vortex tube and I'm wondering if there isn't some way to use this vortex tube to reclaim it directly from the compressor rather than letting the air cool back down to ambient before it enters the vortex tube.

But I'm guessing that if one simply insulated a conventional air-compressor to prevent heat loss it would very quickly burn up or seize up from excess heat. The compressor might have to be made of ceramic or something to withstand that amount of heat.

As it is, my shop compressor gets hot enough to fry an egg WITH (or in spite of) the cooling fins.

I'm seriously thinking about disconnecting the tubing from my compressor, insulating that and hooking it directly to a Vortex Tube, without the intermediary of the compressor tank or with a much smaller insulated buffer tank. There would still be some loss from the compressor head but that copper tube leaving the compressor and going to the tank gets hotter than anything else.

But I guess before all that I'll have to get a vortex tube that actually works effectively.

Also, at such high temperatures, a PVC vortex tube would be out of the question. That would probably also have to be made of some special material like ceramic.

[Stealth]

Yes, an air compressor does indeed heat the air up when running. Any medium under pressure builds heat. When a vortex starts, it is because of pressure because of a constriction which forces the medium into a smaller space. Acceleration is the result of this constriction. Building a self running vortex is indeed possible, but the medium which is used may have to be reconsidered. Air has very a small density, where a liquid, on the other hand has many times the density. In my opinion, a self running vortex could be designed to take advantage of a small water pump feeding a vortex tube and the water itself powering a generator to power the pump. I know it defeats the laws of thermodynamics, but in special instances, there may very well be circumstances that do just that. A vortex is one of the least understood phenomena in nature. If we could control these, we could prevent hurricanes and tornados. The tremendous power of a river is the secret. This is nature in one of its most powerful shows of strength in a long term situation. Many have been tamed with dams and the hydroelectric potential is staggering. With vortex's, it could be even more powerful. Good Luck. stealth

[Tom Booth]

In regard to metal vs. PVC.

I've been thinking that it might be necessary to adjust the length of the Hot tube for different materials depending on their heat conductivity.

I believe my copper tube is too long because when I insert something like a thin wooden dowel into the end of the tube it is possible to measure the length of the vortex according to when the dowel starts or stops spinning and it is also possible to measure its speed. It slows down more and more as it moves down the length of the tube until it seems to stop altogether or at least no longer has the strength to spin the dowel.

As it is, it seems that the vortex is only "living" about 2/3 the length of the tube at that point that it can be felt trying to spin the dowel inserted into the tube, or it will begin actually spinning it. I'm imagining that the tube should be reduced in length accordingly otherwise I would think that the hot and cold air would tend to mix and equalize toward the end of the tube as the vortex slows down, before making the return trip to the cold side - if that is in fact the way this thing works. If the "outer" vortex peters out there might not be any "inner" vortex.

Now that the thing is working a little, I'm reluctant to go lopping off a couple more inches, but it was shortening the tube that got it working to begin with. Maybe shortening it a little more would make for further improvement.

I'm going by the fact that I was following dimensions given that appear to be for steel pipe.

Copper, being a better heat conductor than steel would dissipate heat more quickly - perhaps making for a shorter lived or shorter length vortex and therefore calling for a shorter length of pipe when using copper instead of steel.

PVC on the other hand could be longer than either of these - maybe ?