Methane-nitrogen separation processes in a Ranque-Hilsch vortex tube

A brass vortex tube is used to carry out a series ofdifferent experiments. The main object of the presentresearch is to focus on the importance of identifyingwhether vortex tube is suitable for separating gas species(Methane-Nitrogen mixture) or not. For this purpose atwo- dimensional computational fluid dynamicssimulation (CFD) of a vortex tube with a kind of axismetric geometry and continuous state flow has beencarried out by using the commercial finite volume code(Fluent ۶.۳.۲۶ software) and mass, energy andmomentum (Navier-Stokes) equations are solved withina counter-flow RHVT. It is observed that gas speciesseparation goes up by increasing the inlet pressure. CFDcode is also applied to investigation the role of inletpressure on the gas species (Methane-Nitrogen mixture)and temperature separation. For various inlet pressures,some simulations have been done. It was observed thatas the inlet pressure increases, the energy separationphenomenon in VT has been improved.The highly rotating flow field structure and itscharacteristic are simulated and analyzed with respect tovarious operating inlet pressure ranges and different coldfractions. Numerical results of compressible andturbulent flows are derived by using of the standard k-εturbulence model, where throughout the vortex tube wastaken as a computational domain. Finally, some resultsof the CFD models are validated by the availableexperimental data and shown reasonable agreement, andother ones are compared qualitatively. For validation theresults of simulation, choose air as fluid by usingexperimental data and their good agreement wereobvious.

کلیدواژه ها:

Vortex Tube ، Gas separation ، methanenitrogenseparation ، Ranque-Hilsch