Turning steam to ice

[Matt_barnett]

HI guys

I'm looking into creating ice particles from steam, blasting steam (from a humidifier / pressurised container) into a chamber with the cold air outlet of a vortex tube (at around -18 C).
Just looking into the theory of this, does anyone know if I should be able to create ice particles using cold water vapour (i.e. from an ultrasonic fogger) just as well?

Thanks

[monkey spanners]

What about a paint spray gun? I think you would be able to alter the spray patern etc, or a nozzle of a aerosol can?

Jon

[Andy P]

HI guys

I'm looking into creating ice particles from steam, blasting steam (from a humidifier / pressurised container) into a chamber with the cold air outlet of a vortex tube (at around -18 C).
Just looking into the theory of this, does anyone know if I should be able to create ice particles using cold water vapour (i.e. from an ultrasonic fogger) just as well?

Thanks

Sounds like you don't want much ice!

The vortex tube works by separating high energy (and hence high temperature) air into one stream which comes out one end of the tube, and low energy (low temperature) air out the other end. If it works at all with steam then I would expect it to work better with low temperature ultrasonically humidified air, but I suspect that the water vapour in both cases will go in the high energy stream (ie the vortex tube will act like a centrifuge) in which case you will get cold, dry air out the cold end.

One other thought - how would you propose pressurising the ultrasonically humidified air? If you pressurise it before humidifying then I suspect the humidifier won't work.

Final question - why on earth go to all that trouble???

cheers
Andy P