A customer is extruding stringy sticky strands. The problem they were having is that the strands would not flow from the extruder down the chute onto a conveyor. They installed EXAIR Super Air Nozzles to help them along the way. This is a simple straight forward application and should have worked but it didn’t.

 They forwarded me some pictures along with some videos. It was obvious to me why they were not successful. The had installed the nozzle inside a pipe and dead ended it with a pipe cap.

 The design of the nozzle is to entrain ambient air for efficiency.

What was happening is that the nozzle was creating a vacuum inside the closed pipe and drawing in the sticky material. The cavity filled up and blocked the flow from the nozzle.

The customer drilled large vent holes all around the perimeter of the pipe cap to allow air to vent in and the problem was solved.

They were quite surprised at the volume of air these nozzles sucked in. It was visual proof that they needed to replace all open pipe and conventional nozzles in their facility to reduce their compressed air consumption.

Joe Panfalone
Application Engineer
joepanfalone@exair.com