Between 1991 and 1995 I was a research student in the Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge. During this period I studied the vortex tube in some detail and wrote the thesis you can find on this site, for which I was awarded an M.Sc. (Note that the University of Cambridge use a unique system for denoting their degrees - at most other UK universities this degree would be described as an M.Phil).
While doing this work, I put up a few simple web pages with some basic information about the Hilsch tube. The response was overwhelming, and I was swamped by requests for copies of anything I had written. Dealing with these requests became too time consuming, so when I had finished writing the thesis, I developed these pages to provide easy access to the text.
A secondary consideration was that during my research, I found there was a lack of co-ordinated information about the tube. I was surprised that there were no books devoted to the topic, and only a handful of difficult to obtain academic thesis. Much work had been done over the decades, but it was very disjoint, and many authors seemed unaware of important references. It was clear that this piecemeal approach was an obstacle to better understanding of the tube. By developing these pages, I hoped in some small way to improve the availability of information.
You are probably right.
These pages and the thesis are not intended as an example of excellent writing or excellent science. I have made them avaliable only because people have asked for them. I offer no guarantee that the science is correct, nor that the literature review is comprehensive. In fact, I am sure that better material exists - but it is difficult to get hold of. If you don't like these pages then I am sorry - but no one is forcing you to read them. If you have better material I would be happy to include it or link to it.
One correspondant has pointed out to me that the thesis does not cover much of the substantial Russian language literature dealing with the tube. I accept this criticism entirely - however there is not much that I can do about it as (i) I do not read Russian and (ii) translations are almost impossible to get hold of at reasonable cost. If would be pleased to include a review of this literature on the site if anyone would like to provide one.
I am no longer actively working on the tube. In fact I have not done any substantial work on the vortex tube since 1996. In part this is due to a lack of funding, but also I have wanted to persue other interests.
I am hoping to pick my vortex tube work up again during 2002.
There are two reasons:
I'm currently Research Fellow in Renewable Energy at the University of Sunderland. I'm working on the cost modelling and design optimisation of offshore wind energy systems.
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