Transcripción del resumen del autor. Throttling valves are currently utilised to reduce high-pressure natural gas flowing through the distribution pipeline to the working level of customers’ equipment. This wastes valuable energy of the gas. Due to low natural gas consumption at customer premises, it is not feasible to utilise expansion machines. In this study, a new idea is proposed to take advantage of the Vortex Tube and natural gas pressure reduction. The idea is to replace the throttling valve with a Vortex Tube in the natural gas pressure reduction system and take advantage of the generated cooling capacity. An experimental investigation was made to determine the effects of the cold orifice diameter and the energy separation of the counter-flow Vortex Tube when air and natural gas are used as the fluid. The energy separation was investigated by use of the experimentally obtained data.

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