Experimental and comparative study on material effect of vortex tube on the cold outlet air temperature

Abstract

The Vortex tube is used for various applications like cooling of the equipments in CNC machines, refrigerators, cooling suits etc. This study converses the application of Taguchi method for establishing the influence of process parameters including type of material on the response, cold outlet temperature. Mild steel and the composite material - Epoxy polyester are the two materials used for the separate fabrication of Vortex tube. Experimental work has been carried out to analyze the performance of Vortex tube under the influence of five controllable input variables namely orifice diameter, nozzle diameter, hot tube length and diameter and inlet pressure of air. Cold temperature is considered as output response. Optimal cold outlet air temperature is found out by Taguchi's parameter design. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) established the stasistical significance of parameters on the response. Finally, the confirmation test is carried out to verify the results. The performance of Vortex tube fabricated with composite material is weighed against that made up of mild steel.