Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Cooling with lower pressure

Increasing pressure of gas usually increases its temperature and reduction of pressure causes cooling in most gaseous substances except hydrogen, helium and neon at room temperature although at different temperatures they may cool during expansion. This effect is called Joule-Thomson effect. Gas canisters heat up during the time they get filled and they cool down to the temperature of surrounding environment but after decompressing it after that cooling they become much colder than they were before. 
That's the effect that makes fridges, freezers and air conditioning devices work. They all compress coolant gas in one part of device and that makes it temporarily hotter but it gets to cool down to room or outside temperature on outside of device. If it gets to re-expand into larger tubes that surround for example inside of fridge then it will cool down to much lower temperature. 
This effect also causes cooling of compressed spray deodorants and computer dusters (dusters can even cover surfaces with ice if they are sprayed upside down so the liquid could pour out).


Using the formula from there shows that reduction of air pressure by half decreases its absolute temperature by 20% which could cool average room temperature to around -35 C. 1% change in pressure should decrease it by ~1 C. 90% reduction in pressure decreases absolute temperature by half so room temperature would become about -120 C. Fast moving air vehicle part often cause air vortices and vortices have lower pressure in middle. That low pressure cooling condenses air vapor causing vapor stream on planes with also possible ice formation.  









Diesel engines use this effect in reverse to ignite diesel by compressing air quickly to 40 atmospheres which heats it to 550 C and is enough to ignite diesel.

Sudden decompression could also be problem to submarines. Nuclear submarine USS Thresher
sank with 129 people as it could not rise to surface. It is suspected that while attempting to empty ballast water tank with compressed air it cooled so much it became clogged with ice and could not reduce its mass so it kept sinking until submarine couldn't take pressure and imploded. In testing with similar pressure they found that moisture in compressed air formed after few seconds of decompressing and that removing moisture from compressed air could avoid this problem.

Space shuttle engines can generate enough heat to vaporize it but they cool the engines by using liquid hydrogen as fuel and it cool down as depressurizing hydrogen cools it near 33 kelvins. Hydrogen tubes reach around engine and go inside were they spread through over thousand parallel metal pipes that don't melt due to cooling.     

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