Vorsana

Mechanically induced vortices have a surprising ability to separate lighter fractions of a gas or fluid from heavier fractions.

The Ranque-Hilsch vortex tube separates light from heavy fractions without any added momentum from rotating machinery. Cool, low-pressure light fractions exit the feed end, and hot, low-pressure heavy fractions exit the other end. How the thermal and mass separation happens in a vortex tube never has been explained.

Light fractions in flue gas have a higher root-mean-square velocity than heavy fractions, according to the kinetic theory of gases. When the flue gas is constrained to rotate in a vortex, centrifugal separation happens by virtue of this intrinsic velocity difference of gas fractions.

The formula for root-mean-square velocity is v_rms = (3RT/M)^1/2 where R = the gas constant = 8.31 J/mol.K , T = temperature in Kelvins, and M is the molar mass in kg/mol). At room temperature (300 K), carbon dioxide (molar mass 44 g/mol) has a root-mean-squared speed of 412 m/s, while nitrogen (28 g/mol) is 25% faster at 517 m/s, and sulfur dioxide (64 g/mol) is 17% slower at 342 m/s. Water vapor (18 g/mol) is the fastest fraction of all at 645 m/s. Momentum of the various fractions is in an inverse order, with water vapor having the lowest momentum although it has the highest root-mean-square velocity.

In fine scale vortices, centripetal acceleration is strong due to the small radius. For light fractions in the vortex flow, centripetal acceleration is especially strong due to their high velocity. Centripetal acceleration of light fractions will be significantly higher than centripetal acceleration of heavy fractions, without any momentum transfer from the apparatus as in a conventional gas centrifuge. This should be clear from inspection of the formula for centripetal acceleration: a = v²/r (a = centripetal acceleration, v = velocity, and r = vortex radius).

The rotation of the impellers of the McCutchen Process, which is exclusively represented by Vorsana, serves to organize a radial tree network of low pressure gradients to sweep and concentrate the tiny separation effects of the turbulent vortices. This can be considered as a dynamically created multiscale radial array of vortex tubes. With this, a feed flow can be separated , with the light fractions squeezed into vortex cores, to be axially extracted in an inward sink flow, while the heavy fractions are thrown outward by the vortices to become a concentrated radial outward flow. In the radial array, the feed end and cool light fraction end of each vortex tube is at the impeller axis, and the hot heavy fraction end is at the vortex periphery. It should be noted that residence time is long, unlike the conventional vortex tube, so separation can be very thorough.