A Review of Computational Studies of Temperature Separation Mechanism in Vortex Tube

The Ranque Hilsch Vortex Tube (RHVT) is a very simple device well known for its phenomenal temperature separation effect. With a single input of compressed gas, the tube simultaneously produces two different streams of gas ? one being hotter and other being colder than input gas. Over the years, different theories have attempted to explain this effect without achieving any universal agreement. Small size of RHVT presents considerable difficulties towards predicting temperature, pressure and flow field inside it. This is where Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis comes to the aid of researchers. Many of researchers have attempted such analysis using turbulence models such as The Standard k-ε model, RNG k-ε model & Realizable k-ε model, Large Eddy Simulation Technique (LES) etc. This paper attempts to present a review of such recent qualitative studies carried out on RHVT using CFD. Care has been taken to explore diversified parameters related to flow physics inside RHVT, instead of being monotonous one. This review is expected to help future researches in the related domain