Investigations of energy separation effect in vortex tube for natural gases

This paper aims to investigate fixed composition natural gases including N₂, CH₄ and C₂H₄ energy separation effect in vortex tube. Energy separation phenomena of those gases were investigated by means of three-dimensional Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) method. Flow fields of natural gases in fixed inlet boundary conditions were simulated. The results main factors were found that affect the energy separation with cold mass fraction being 0.7 and pressure drop ratio being 3.90. At the same time, this paper has illustrated the effects and tendencies of energy separation with gases in the tube under the same cold mass flow fraction and cold pressure ratio. The results show mixture gases total temperature difference effect is unchanged varied with the cold mass fraction; CH₄% has no effect on the vortex cold end temperature separation, but varied of CH₄% has an influence in total temperature and hot end separation effect; total temperature separation effect of CH₄% was divided into two sections, one is0%-80%, and the other 80%-100%.