Open AccessOptimisation of vortex tubes and the potential for use in atmospheric separation
Author(s) -
Gautam Agarwal,
Zack P McConkey,
J. Hassard
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of physics. d, applied physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.857
H-Index - 198
eISSN - 1361-6463
pISSN - 0022-3727
DOI - 10.1088/1361-6463/abb977
Subject(s) - vortex tube , vortex , atmosphere (unit) , mechanics , compressed air , cyclone (programming language) , tube (container) , environmental science , atmospheric pressure , materials science , meteorology , thermodynamics , physics , composite material , computer science , field programmable gate array , computer hardware
Climate change requires us to extract hundreds of gigatonnes of CO 2 from the atmosphere over the next few decades. This requires we develop and scale up viable technologies to sequester CO 2 from the highly dilute atmospheric concentrations. CO 2 gas freezes at −78.5 ° C and thus, in principle, can be separated from air, the nitrogen in which begins to freeze at −210 ° C. Vortex tubes were investigated as a potential method of carbon capture through a series of geometrical and procedural optimisations. Ambient air is compressed and then separated by temperature due to the action of the Vortex Tube. These optimisations determined an increase in system pressure and length at cold mass fraction of 40% led to increased cooling. The heat profile of pipes suggested radiative cooling as the vortex propagated. An optimised single tube reached a maximum cooling of 39.9±2 ° C. Vortex tubes thus present a method of separating and capturing components of the atmosphere. With further work, such as the successful combination of tubes in series, it is hoped that vortex tubes may prove to be a scalable solution capable of contributing to the reduction in atmospheric CO 2 using the solar cyclone tower to provide the energy and air flows required for this task.