Recently, the Ranque-Hilsch vortex tube is widely used for the local cooler of industrial equipment for special purpose. Although many studies on energy extraction in the vortex tube using air as the working fluid have been made so far, a few experimental studies treated solid particles extraction for incompressible fluid. So, an experimental study for the solid particles extraction in the vortex tube(Ranque-Hilsch vortex tube) using the water which is essentially an incompressible fluid is presented. The experiments were carried out with various cold end orifice diameter ratios ranging from 0.25 to 0.70, the input pressure ranging from 1 to 3MPa was considered. The emphasis was given to examine the effect of geometry factors of vortex tube at working fluid(water) for solid particles(Al2O3) extraction. The optimum geometry factor and inlet pressure for the maximum solid particles extraction was found that the smaller cold end orifice diameter ratio and the higher inlet pressure in experimental condition increase.

Vortex tube is a simple device which can produce two streams of hot and cold temperature without any chemical reaction from a compressed gas stream. Recently, it is expected to be not only one of the possible alternative cooling methods to reduce environmental hazard but also various applications. Small size vortex tube is widely used in industrial application, just like a spot cooling devices, however, it is not enough to study length effect of the vortex tube yet. Therefore, experiments were carried out in various vortex length ratio(L/D=10-55) to find an appropriate geometry of vortex tube length at 5.6mm diameter, under optimum conditions, i.e. vortex nozzle area ratio(Sn=0.155) and cold end orifice diameter ratio(ζ=0.446). Working fluids was used air. The results shows that L=25D is design guide in the vortex tube.