Although the vortex tubes are characterised by a low energetic efficiency of the separation process, the opportunity of using them in practice is determined also by a series of particularities of the separation process and of their building: inside the vortex tube it is possible to occur simultaneous several phenomena, like cooling or heating of a gas, cooling and drying or cleaning of the cold gas flow, etc.; the achieving of these processes inside one single apparatus enables the simplifying of the main equipment, in some cases leading to the diminishing of extra energy consumption; the working medium for the vortex tube can be a gas or a mixture of gases, even multi-phasic mixtures. The present paper presents in short the choice criteria of the using field of vortex tubes (apparatus that uses the vortex effect of energetical separation). Starting from those, a solution of using them in the field of thermochemical treatments is being proposed, namely during plasma nitriding process.
