Tag: vortex air cooler

Which Vortex Tube Do I Need?

Published on by Dave WoernerLeave a comment

Last week, I wrote a brief introduction to vortex tubes, titled “One Item Generates ¼ Ton of Refrigeration and Fits in the Palm of your Hand.” In it I introduced the Vortex Tube and the other products made from Vortex Tubes: Cabinet Coolers, Cold Guns, Adjustable Spot Cooler and Mini Coolers. I also introduced the idea of a cold fraction.  Today, I want to talk about specific Vortex Tube models.

The flow from the cold side of the Vortex Tubeis characterized in two different ways. First, we characterize the air by ΔT (temperature drop) from the starting compressed air temperature. With a supply pressure of 100 PSIG, the drop in temperature can range from 54° to 123° Fahrenheit. Second, we characterize the flow of air in Standard Cubic Feet per Minute. The different models of vortex tube are design to provide a range of flows and temperature.

Vortex Tube Specification
Vortex Tube Specification Chart

When facing this list you have numerous choices that can be daunting. My priorities for selecting a Vortex Tube for a customer are twofold. First, you need the Vortex Tube that will work in your application. Second, I want to choose the model with the least amount of compressed air in order to solve their problem with the least amount of air possible. The smallest Vortex Tube is a model 3202. It also utilizes the least amount of compressed air, 2 SCFM. At 100 PSIG and an 80 percent cold fraction, it will produce a cold flow of 1.6 SCFM at 54° F  below your compressed air temperature. If your compressed air temperature is starting at 70° F, your cold temperature will 16° F. All of the Vortex Tubes will be able produce this same temperature drop, but depending on which Vortex Tube you use will determine the volume of flow produced at that temperature.

1.6 SCFM of flow 54° F below compressed air temperature will take 135 BTU/HR away from a small 100°F box, which is enough energy to cool a needle, a small sensor, or a tiny camera, but what if you have a bigger area you need to cool. Then you need to use a Vortex Tube that will produce more flow. The 3202, 3204, and 3208 will all produce air at the same temperature, but the 3204 and 3208 will produce more volume of cold air.  With the same parameters as above (100 PSIG of inlet pressure and 80 percent cold fraction) the 3204 will produce 3.2 SCFM of cold air and cool 275 BTU/Hr. out of a 100° F environment. The 3208 will produce 6.4 SCFM of cold air and cool 550 BTU/Hr. These larger Vortex Tubes could be used to cool a closed circuit camera in a hot environment or a small drill bit where coolant is prohibited or undesired. From here our product continue to produce more volume of flow and we can go up to our largest Vortex Tube, 3299 which will use 150 SCFM of compressed and cool up to 10,200 BTU/HR.

What if you have an application where you don’t need more air but 16°F  isn’t cold enough? Then you can adjust your cold fraction. Adjusting the cold fraction will allow you to increase the temperature drop. Opening the brass hot valve, will lower the cold fraction. As more air is allowed to escape out of the hot end of the Vortex Tube, the temperature and the flow rate of the cold flow decrease.  If you need to cool below a 50% cold fraction we recommend the 3400 series Vortex Tubes. At 100 PSIG this would occur when you need more than 100° F temperature drop.

Vortex Tubes can be used in a variety of cooling application. If you have any question about the topic discussed above please contact me or another application engineer.

Dave Woerner
Application Engineer
DaveWoerner@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_DW

One Item Generates 1/4 Ton of Refrigeration and Fits in the Palm of your Hand

Published on by Dave WoernerLeave a comment

One of the most powerful, peculiar and perplexing products in the EXAIR catalog is the Vortex Tube. The medium sized vortex tube can generate up to a ¼ ton of refrigeration and still fit into the palm of your hand. It can generate cold temperatures that are 129° Fahrenheit below the input compressed air temperature, without any moving parts. It provides effective cooling on a wide variety of industrial systems like electrical cabinets, cutting tools, grinding operations, setting hot melt glue and a number of other cooling processes.

The Vortex Tube is used in Cabinet Cooler Systems, Cold Guns, Mini Coolers and Adjustable Spot Coolers to utilize compressed air to create cold air for your application needs. The Vortex Tube uses a Ranque-Hilsch tube to create the cooling effect. This principle has been used since 1927 to generate hot and cold flows from a source of compressed air. For more information on the physics behind how the Vortex Tube operates, visit here.

Our units are designed to operate at inlet pressures between 20-120 PSIG. The vortex tube comes in three different sizes, small, medium and large. The small unit will use between 2 and 8 SCFM of compressed air when fed with 100 PSIG of compressed air. It can be used with pressures much lower, but the change in temperature will not be as great. Below is a chart listing the temperature drops and rises of the vortex tubes with respect to supply pressure and cold fraction.

Vortex Tube Performance Data
The Cold Fraction performance chart shows temperature drops and rises for a Vortex Tube.

To use Vortex Tubes intelligently, cold fraction needs to be defined. A cold fraction is the ratio of cold air flow to total air flow through the inlet of the Vortex Tube. This cold fraction is adjustable on the Vortex Tubes and Adjustable Spot Coolers, but it is preset on the Cabinet Cooler Systems and Cold Guns. Adjusting the cold fraction changes 2 variables with the Vortex Tube. First, it changes the amount of cold flow from the Vortex Tube. Second, lowering the cold fraction also lowers the cold air temperature. Flow and temperature will both determine the heat transfer of the system.  For tool cooling operations, a very high cold fraction is used.  If you have a tool that may be operating above 150 or 200° Fahrenheit, it will cool faster with more air flow at a higher temperature than air at sub-zero temperatures. For applications where the final temperatures are very low, below freezing or sub zero, lower cold fractions can be used.

Find the blog next week to find out about what the addition of generators affects on a Vortex Tube.

Dave Woerner
Application Engineer
DaveWoerner@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_DW

Vortex Tubes Make Hot Air Too

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

Back in the spring, my good friend and co-worker Neal Raker wrote a great piece, titled “Can I Use A Vortex Tube For Heating?” which I will try my best not to borrow too much from or outright plagiarize in the blog to follow. I only mention it because I had the pleasure of helping a customer with one of the “usually few and far between” Vortex Tube heating applications recently.

Like Neal said, the conditions under which Vortex Tubes fit a heating application are fairly narrow, but certainly not unheard of. In this situation, a reciprocating air motor had been in place on a piece of factory machinery for years. A recent change in the part being manufactured meant that the motor had to be slowed down, which meant throttling down on the vent valve on the motor’s pneumatic exhaust. When they did this, the valve became prone to freezing up, meaning someone had to rig up a heat gun and climb up on top of the machine to the vent valve, directing hot air on the valve until it thawed. It got to be a real hindrance to the process when this happened several times a day.

The caller was familiar with our Vortex Tube products, having used Mini Coolers and Cold Guns in other parts of the plant. He knew that there was hot air coming out of the other end, and thought it could be used to thaw the vent valve, but was concerned, because it was such a low flow.

Mini Cooler (left) and Cold Gun (right).
Mini Cooler (left) and Cold Gun (right).  Cold air from one end; hot exhaust minimized on the other.

He was right: the hot air exhaust of both the Mini Cooler and Cold Gun is a small fraction of the total air supply…that’s by design. Also, it’s passed through a noise reducing muffler which further spreads it out to make it nice & quiet…also by design.

That’s when a fuller explanation of Vortex Tube operation came into play: See, the Mini Coolers and Cold Guns are all set to a high Cold Fraction (the percentage of supply air that is directed to the cold end,) so, although the hot exhaust is indeed fairly hot, there’s just not a lot of it. By contrast, our 3400 Series Maximum Cold Temperature Vortex Tubes are adjustable for lower Cold Fractions (from 20-50%,) meaning that the hot exhaust flow can range from 50-80% of the supply air flow. Additionally, the hot end of the Vortex Tube has male NPT threads, for convenient porting & direction of the hot air flow.

The EXAIR Vortex Tube. Cold air from one end; hot air from the other. Fully adjustable.
The EXAIR Vortex Tube. Cold air from one end; hot air from the other. Fully adjustable.

Now, back to the conditions that made this a good fit for the Vortex Tube: the machinery already had an ample and easily accessible supply of compressed air…they were able to tap a line from the air motor’s supply. The closest outlet for their heat gun was on the other side of the walkway, which meant they had to stretch an extension cord across the walkway, creating a trip hazard. The vent valve is also small enough that they could use a Model 3402 Vortex Tube, which utilizes only 2 SCFM @100psig…a tiny fraction of what the air motor uses.

With the Vortex Tube mounted permanently in place, the vent valve now operates flawlessly, without the need for manually thawing with the incredibly inconvenient heat gun.

If you think you might have a decent fit for a Vortex Tube heating application, give us a call. You may be right.

Russ Bowman
Application Engineer
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Testing, Testing

Published on by Lee EvansLeave a comment

One of the best criteria to know in a cooling application is the amount of cooling capacity required.  For example, if an ultrasonic weld needs to be cooled in 10 seconds and 400 BTU/hr. of cooling capacity is needed, we can recommend a suitable Vortex Tube.  (In this case, model 3208 with 550 BTU/hr. of cooling capacity.)  Or, if a specific temperature and flow of air is required, we can recommend accordingly. I recently spoke to a customer who needed a specific temperature of air at a low volume…

3408 Vortex Tube Test at 100 PSIG
EXAIR 3408 Vortex Tube tested at 100 PSIG with an inlet  compressed air temperature of 77°F (6.9 BARG, compressed air temperature of 25°C)

The photo above shows a test run for an end user that needed to achieve a specific cold outlet temperature from a Vortex Tube.  Their specific application required lower flow, lower temperature air, which led to the recommendation of our 3400 series units. The 3400 series Vortex Tubes produce the coldest air temperatures at a lower volume of air.

The project deadline for this end user had been shortened, making it imperative to find a solution which was not only suitable, but repeatable and readily available.  And, although the cold fraction percentages (which define temperature rise/drop from a Vortex Tube) are published on the EXAIR.com site and in our catalog, a quick test setup and photo can go a long way toward providing confidence within a customer that we could provide a solution.

The test proves the data from EXAIR is true to our published values, and gave the customer the confidence to order four pieces for their project.  Update:  The customer called today and ordered four more pieces.

Discussion and testing are methods we use in the Application Engineering department at EXAIR to determine if our products are suitable for an application.  If you have questions about your application and would like an EXAIR opinion, contact an EXAIR Application Engineer.

Lee Evans
Application Engineer
LeeEvans@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_LE