Improvement Vortex Cooling Capacity by Reducing Hot Tube Surface Temperature: Experiment

AbstractA vortex tube is a cooling device in which an air can be used as a working medium; thus, the vortex cooling system is environmentally friendly. Thermal separation flow studied and preliminary tests suggest that reducing the temperature of an external surface at the hot tube section of the vortex tube could increase the vortex cooling capacity. In this paper, a thermoelectric module is employed to extract heat from the hot tube surface and then release it to environment. In other words, a temperature difference is used to generate power by the thermoelectric generator as thermal energy harvester. A test rig is designed and constructed, in the laboratory, for the experiment on the vortex cooling system incorporating the thermoelectric module. Test parameters are the cold fraction from 0 to 1 and an inlet air pressure of 1.5 bars. The results show that the cooling capacity and efficiency increase when the thermoelectric module is used to extract heat from the hot tube surface of the vortex tube and electricity is generated as by product. The cooling capacity and efficiency of the vortex tube is increased by 4.3% and 9.6% respectively