Design of Vortex Tube for Application on Vending Machine

Lau, Ching Yee (2020) Design of Vortex Tube for Application on Vending Machine. Final Year Project (Bachelor), Tunku Abdul Rahman University College.

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Abstract

Vortex tube is a simple thermo-mechanical device which use air as the operating fluid to produce both hot and cold stream simultaneously. Vortex tube is known to be able to produce a high temperature drop between inlet temperature and cold-end outlet temperature and hence it is widely used in cryogenic application. Therefore, vortex tube is used in this research to develop a new rapid cooling system. The new cooling system is aimed to replace the conventional refrigeration system inside beverage vending machine which wasted tons of energy globally every year. In this research, the design and analysis on vortex tube will be the main focus due to the vortex tube is the main component of the new rapid cooling system. In order to produce a high-performance vortex tube to suits the need of application in vending machine, literature review has been done to obtain the required geometrical parameters as well as thermo-physical parameters. The designed vortex tube is then undergone CFD simulation using ANSYS to determine the suitable operating pressure and cold fraction for maximum refrigeration effect. Finally, the practicality of the new rapid cooling system is investigated. From the CFD simulation performed, it was found that the designed vortex tube able to produce air temperature lower than required temperature. The feasibility study concluded that the designed rapid cooling system is theoretically able to cold an aluminium canned beverage to the serving temperature in less than 2 min.