A Study on the Application Possibility of the Vehicle Air Conditioning System Using Vortex Tube

Since refrigerants applied to vehicle air conditioning systems exacerbate global warming, many studies have been conducted to supplement them. However, most studies have attempted to maximize the efficiency and minimize the environmental impact of the refrigerant, and thus, an air conditioning system without refrigerant is required. The vortex tube is a temperature separation system capable of separating air at low and high temperatures using compressed air. When applied to an air conditioning system, it is possible to construct an eco-friendly system that does not use a refrigerant. In this paper, various temperature changes and characteristics of a vortex tube were identified and applied to an air conditioning system simulation device. Additionally, an air conditioning system simulation device using indirect heat exchange and direct heat exchange methods was constructed to test the low-temperature air flow rate (y c ), according to the temperature and pressure. As a result of the experiment, the temperature of the indirect heat exchange method was found to be higher than the direct heat exchange method, but the direct heat exchange method had low flow resistance. As a result, the direct heat exchange method can easily control the temperature according to the pressure and the low-temperature air flow rate (y c ). Therefore, it was judged that the direct heat exchange method is more feasible for use in air conditioning systems than the indirect heat exchange method.