Vortex Tubes have the ability to solve many heat related problems within industry by creating a focused stream of cold air. Generally referred to as a spot cooling product, we often get the question “what can you do with them?”
Beyond some of the application I will highlight here, you may also register in our Knowledge Base where you can browse through 800+ applications within the Application Database for our products. The easiest way to look through only Vortex Tube applications is to enter “Vortex Tube” in the bottom, blank field of the application search box.
You will see that the Vortex Tubes are used thoughout industry. In my first example our customer forms tubes from steel strip. The strip is washed in a 140F solution then move over a series of rollers. The initial roller was building up heat transferred from the steel strip and had cracked due to longterm exposure to heat. With a Vortex Tube they have cooled the 4″ dia. x 2″ wide roller to prevent heat transfer from strip steel.
Another customer, who manufactures weed control chemicals, is filling 5 mililiter vials with a warm chemical gel. The gel is at 40C when poured into the vial and sets up at 38C. Their Vortex Tube was used to blow into the vial and create a skin on the chemical gel to seal the gel in the vials.
We have also sold a Vortex Tube to a manufacturer of dietary supplements who uses gelatin in their process. They convey the gelatin into a bulk hopper with a slide gate on the bottom. On the other side of the slide gate is a steam heating process which melts the gelatin for processing. The heat was building up in the slide gate and melting the gelatin at the bottom of the bulk hopper, causing more maintenance upon the slide gate than desired. They used the cold air from a Vortex Tube through a flexible line to wrap the slide gate and cool it from the outside to prevent heat buildup.
A heat activated adhesive was giving a veneer manufacturer problems beacause they ran the adhesive through a 4″ pipe to deliver it from the source to the veneer line. Part of this pipe ran up high in the rafters and was picking up too much environmental heat during the simmer and causing the adhesiv eto thicken up and preventing it from being applied properly. This customer used a Vortex Tube to push air through a 5″ pipe x 10′ long around the 4″ section of pipe. This has prevented the adhesive from picking up the heat and causing problems.
Vortex Tubes are also the fundamental product used in our Cold Guns, which are preset, non-adjustable cooling products built for maximum Btu/Hr. They make up our Adjustable Spot Coolers which can acheive very cold temperatures at low volume or high Btu/Hr values. And of course, they are used to manufcature our Cabinet Cooler systems used to cool electronic enclosures.
Vortex Tubes are ideal for hot, dirty, hard to reach or maintain areas. They have no moving parts and require no maintenance beyond changing out a compressed air filter element once or twice a year. If you are experiencing a heat related problem in your production, consider a Vortex Tube.
