On Wed, 11 Nov 1998, Bob Blick wrote:

> Yes, there are commercial systems available. You can buy vortexes in any
> number of sizes and ratings.
>
> No need to reinvent the wheel. Do a search on "vortex cooling" and you'll
> find a few sources of them.
>
> Noisy little suckers, though.

Uh, a vortex cooler works on different principles than normal expansion,
no ? It's not a thermodynamic thingy, it exploits the statistical
distribution of 'local' density in a gas, which also depends on
'local' temperature and separates the different 'parts' of the gas by
centrifugal force, thus obtaining two fluxes, one of hot, and one of cold
expanded gas. This is very nice but it requires a lot of air and
mechanical tuning (tuning the air input won't do normally).

am I wrong ? Has anyone used such a cooler in a power electronics project
on this list ?

Peter