Study of CO2 separation characteristic in supersonic high-pressure vortex tube

Skid-mounted equipment of liquefied CBM/NG is currently facing two problems: One is that the equipments of desulfurization and decarburization, the traditional DMEA method of equipment is too large, can not be achieved to the skid-mounted package. Another is that the key refrigerating apparatus must provide adequate cold energy and have excellent field maintenance performance. A newly developed supersonic vortex tube with the use of pressure difference between the hot and cold end to specially designed nozzle pressure is conducive to the formation of supersonic flow. This supersonic flow leads to low-temperature region in the nozzle section. Then, CO₂, sulfur and other impurities in natural gas become to liquids and are thrown to the nozzle wall due to the strong centrifugal force. This paper focuses on the vortex tube on the separation characteristics of CO₂ and other impurities. Studies show that the new vortex tube extrusion efficiency of CO₂ is over 85% and can replace the DMEA method. Studies also show that the control of high-pressure vortex tube the back pressure of hot end will help to achieve higher cooling efficiency.