Just last night I was in my garage tinkering around with a vintage Coleman Camping lantern from 1949 that I am working on refurbishing. I grabbed my parts washing bin (A bread pan my wife let me have because she didn’t like the way it cooked bread) and was reminded that I had been soaking a helmet lock from a friends dirt bike in a penetrating oil. I removed the lock from the pan, wiped it down, then went to my trusty 30 gallon compressor to use a Safety Air Gun to blow the residual oil out of the lock.

When not in use my compressor stays turned off and I modified the factory outlet to include a quarter turn ball valve so that I can retain all air in the receiver tank and not have to charge the tank up every time that I use it. As I turned the valve on I was reminded that I have a rather large air leak that can drain the 30 gallon tank down from 150 psig to 60 psig within a few hours.

While my air system is almost as simple as it can be, single air hose real with an additional quick disconnect before the hose reel for small quick blow offs, it still has over a dozen connections within the system. While my worst offending leak is audible to my slightly aged ears there are other leaks that I cannot see or hear. That is unless I use one of two methods I know to find leaks.

The easiest is right out of our 6 Steps of Compressed Air Optimization, the Ultrasonic Leak Detector (ULD). The ULD is a versatile, low cost, hands free electronic device that will quickly and easily detect the general vicinity of a leak and then easily pinpoint the exact point of the leak. In conducting a test, it took right at twenty minutes to test each of the connections within my system and identify which connections had leaks. The actual repairs of the leaks around an hour. Before fixing though I timed the amount of time it took a friend to use the soapy water method to detect the same leaks.

The soapy water method timed in at around thirty-five minutes for the same number of connections. This was due to a few of the fittings needing to be tested multiple times because of small leaks. It then took an additional fifteen minutes to wipe up all the soapy water that was now dripping down the air line and around the fittings.

While both methods found the same leaks and the ULD performed the task quicker and without any cleanup required, the true focus was on all leaks being repaired. My system has a dozen connection points for a two outlet compressed air system that are regulated and filtered at a single point. This system was draining a 30 gallon tank within a few hours which costs me every time I used my compressor and did not shut off the valve that shuts off the system.

This burden on my electrical bill was removed with less than two hours of labor and I can now leave the compressor fully charged and have air as soon as I need it rather than having to wait for the tank to charge up. Had this been in a production environment the cost could have crippled production resulting in catastrophic.

If you would like to discuss how leaks within your system can easily be found by using the ULD or would like to learn more about the other five steps in our Six Steps To Compressed Air Optimization, contact an Application Engineer.

Brian Farno
Application Engineer
Ph. 1-513-671-3322
BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF

Brian Farno
Application Engineer
BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF