A review on the vortex tube geometrical affecting paramters

: One of the increased usability energy separation devices that deals with compressed fluids such as the air, the water, and several Refrigerants are the Ranque-Hilsch vortex tube due to its simple operating principle to separate the compressed fluid to two hot and cold streams. The aim of the current paper is to review the Ranque-Hilsch tube flow separation most affecting geometrical parameters influencing the thermal separation efficiency in the literature that are conducted numerically and experimentally such as the number of injection nozzles and their cross-sectional shape including the rectangular and the trapezoidal for straight constant and converged nozzle profiles as well as the helical swept nozzle configurations like the nozzles aspect and the convergence ratios, the variation of the helical profile pitch angle with the increase in the nozzles number is also considered in the survey, further geometrical parameters survey is performed that includes the vortex tube orifice size to the nozzle’s length dimensional ratio and also the vortex tube configuration like the divergent and the convergent/divergent vortex tube shapes characteristics that includes the divergent angle and the throttling zone size in addition to the vortex tube length to the hot exit port size ratio and the optimum conical valve shape position and tapering angle.