Commercial vortex tubes are designed for industrial applications to produce a temperature drop of up to . With no moving parts, no electricity, and no refrigerant, a vortex tube can produce refrigeration up to  using 100 standard cubic feet per minute (2.832 m/min) of filtered compressed air at . A control valve in the hot air exhaust adjusts temperatures, flows and refrigeration over a wide range.
Vortex tubes are used for cooling of cutting tools (lathes and mills, both manually-operated and CNC machines) during machining. The vortex tube is well-matched to this application: machine shops generally already use compressed air, and a fast jet of cold air provides both cooling and removal of the chips produced by the tool. This eliminates or drastically reduces the need for liquid coolant, which is messy, expensive, and environmentally hazardous.