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In the present experimental study, the effect of operating parameters such as inlet and outlet pressure as well as inlet temperature on the mass separation capability of vortex tubes (VTs) for a gas mixture is investigated. Specifically, concentrating heavier components of a gas mixture in the hot outlet stream is considered. Proposing a semi-empirical index from the experimental study, the simulation of different arrangements of VTs, and the effect of recycling a portion of the hot outlet stream on its mass separation performance are investigated. Moreover, the proposed separation method by VTs is economically compared with commonly used methods by distillation columns and two-phase separators. The comparison shows the proposed VT cascade is more advantageous, and finally, its potential use in industrial applications is suggested.

The overall heat transfer coefficient (OHTC) of air in a double-pipe helical heat exchanger is studied and experimentally investigated. In order to increase the rate of heat transfer in the annulus section, a copper-wire fin is soldered on the outside area of the internal tube. The literature correlations’ results are presented against the experimental data by changing mass flow rate and temperature, and consequently changing the Reynolds number. Further, a new method is suggested to obtain the heat transfer coefficients of double-pipe helical heat exchangers for the internal tube and the annulus section by combining two of the previously proposed approaches and making subsequent corrections, e.g. using equivalent diameter instead of hydraulic diameter. Moreover, the influence of the hot and cold mass flow rates on the OHTC, as well as the effect of the installed fin on the heat transfer coefficient of the annulus section are investigated. Finally, obtained results show the strength of the suggested correlation and the enhancement in the OHTC due to the presence of the fin in the annulus.

The current study examines different arrangements of vortex tubes (VTs) to get higher performances for cooling and heating. The effects of thermo-physical parameters such as inlet feed temperature and inlet/outlet vortex tube pressure on generated temperature gradient are investigated. To estimate the cold outlet temperatures, the available equations in the literature are verified against our experimental data. Moreover, we propose a new equation to estimate the hot outlet temperature based on the upper limit of hot temperature (ULHT) and the lower limit of cold temperature (LLCT), verified with experimental data as well. Further, several arrangements are simulated to obtain the minimum cold and the maximum hot temperatures for the outlet streams. Finally, the optimal arrangement of the three vortex tubes and a double-pipe helical heat exchanger that gives the highest performance is proposed.

Process measurements play a significant role in process identification, control, and optimization. However, they are often corrupted by two types of errors, random and gross errors. The presence of gross errors in the measurements affects the reliability of optimization and control solutions. Therefore, in this work, we characterize the measurement noise model using a Gaussian mixture distribution, where each mixture component denotes the error distribution corresponding to random error and gross error, respectively. On the basis of this assumption, we propose a maximum likelihood framework for simultaneous steady-state data reconciliation and gross error detection. Since the proposed framework involves the noise mode as a hidden variable denoting the existence of gross errors in the data, it can be solved using the expectation maximization (EM) algorithm. This approach does not require the parameters of the error distribution model to be preset, rather they are determined as part of the solution. Several...