Month: July 2022

Air Amplifiers to Increase Volume of Airflow Aid in Cooling, Cleaning, Circulation, Venting

Published on by bdwagesLeave a comment

Air Amplifiers are a perfect solutions for utilizing air for Venting, Exhausting, Cooling, Drying, or Cleaning with no moving parts. As the name implies, these tools produce a high volume and a high velocity of outlet flow. These are very quiet, efficient and can amplify your air consumption up to 25 times… Here is a great diagram and description of exactly how these work:

Air Amplifiers use the Coanda Effect to generate high flow with low consumption.

As you can see, these fine pieces of engineering genius have no moving parts, and require no electricity. You can easily control the flow, force and velocity by opening or closing the air gap (fixed with a shim) and regulating the the supply air. These can also be ducted on each end to either pull in or remove air or fumes from one room or area to another.

SUPER?? What makes our Super Air Amplifier super? I’m glad you asked. The Super Air Amplifier has a patented design that uses a special shim to maintain critical position of the component parts. This results in a precise amount of compressed air to be released at exact intervals towards the center of the Super Air Amplifier. These jets of air create a constant, high velocity outlet flow across the entire cross-sectional area. This balances out the airflow to maximum performance, this simultaneously minimizes wind shear, causing sound levels up to 3 x’s quieter than other comparable air movers. To completely understand how much air this Super Air Amplifier amplifies (try saying that fast 5 times), please see the below chart.

As you can see, the amplification ratio is between 12 and 25 x the amount of air consumed. For the right applications, these are game changers… Pro tip – notice that even the highest level still falls under OSHA guidelines for noise!!

If you have any questions, or would like to discuss your application directly, please reach out today. We would love to speak with you, and help wherever we can.

Thank you for stopping by,

Brian Wages

Application Engineer

EXAIR Corporation
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Removing Oil From Your Compressed Air Helps Keep Your EXAIR Products Running Maintenance-Free

Published on by Tyler DanielLeave a comment

Most of EXAIR’s line of Intelligent Compressed Air Products have no moving parts and require no maintenance. The caveat to the “no maintenance” aspect is proper filtration at the point of use. Many products air demand products like nozzles, air knives and air amplifiers have very tight orifices that could get clogged from any contaminants such as particulate, condensate, and lubricant. Oil and dirt could build up inside of any of these products and keep them from working properly. EXAIR recommends point of use filtration to be installed just upstream of any EXAIR product for this purpose.

Oil is commonly present in a compressed air supply, whether that’s intentional or not can vary. Many air compressors are oil lubricated by a constant supply of oil, inevitably some of this oil ends up in the air supply. As the piston rings wear, more oil is permitted to pass by and ends up in the distribution system. While this is kept to a minimum with proper maintenance, it is impossible to prevent unless using an oil-free compressor.

Sometimes oil is present in the air supply intentionally, many pneumatic devices require a precise amount of oil to keep the internal moving parts lubricated. In the case of any EXAIR Intelligent Compressed Air Product, we recommend particulate free, condensate free, and oil free air.

In order to remove oil from the air supply, EXAIR offers a line of Oil Removal Filters. These coalescing style filters are used to remove very fine water vapor as well as any residual oil. These filters are highly recommended to be installed just prior to any dryer that contains a media that would be compromised by any lubricant passing through it. Coalescing filters utilize an element typically made up of glass fibers that “coalesce”, or combine, the fine water vapor and oil aerosols until the droplet size becomes large enough that it drops off into the bowl or filter housing. With a coalescing filter, the most common cause of pressure drop increase is due to particulate clogging the filter element. Because of this, a particulate filter should always be installed just prior to any coalescing filters.

Without any filtration, any oil in the air supply will pass through the point of use device and into or on to your product or process. With the elimination of this problem such a simple solution, don’t neglect proper air preparation to ensure you’re delivering clean, oil-free air to all of your Intelligent Compressed Air Products.

Tyler Daniel
Application Engineer
E-mail: TylerDaniel@EXAIR.com
Twitter: @EXAIR_TD

Full Flow Air Knife Creates “Smoke Screen” In Haunted House Attraction

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

EXAIR Corporation’s engineered Air Knife products have a number of uses in industry. The laminar, even flow is conducive to generating a stripping/sweeping action that is particularly effective for blowing off, cooling, cleaning, drying, etc. The way that they entrain enormous amounts of air from the surrounding environment makes them incredibly efficient. This entrainment also makes them very quiet, as it forms a boundary layer that attenuates the sound level of the high velocity flow of the compressed air exiting the Air Knife. These two features have a distinct benefit in a rather unique application in a decidedly non-industrial setting, though.

A company that services amusement parks & carnivals was making a “haunted house” type attraction. At one point, the victims visitors are to be surprised by animated figures “floating” in the air. Their idea was to project the animation on a wall/screen of smoke…spooky, right? They tried discharging the smoke through a series of holes, and even a thin slot, but could not get the effect they wanted, so they called EXAIR to talk about Air Knives.

Smoke escaping small holes or a thin slot doesn’t have much velocity, so it didn’t make a great ‘curtain’ for projection. It’s also turbulent in nature, so it tends to billow & plume (like the top graphic). Engineered compressed air products like EXAIR’s Air Knives generate a laminar flow (like the bottom graphic) whose velocity can be precisely controlled by regulating the air supply pressure.

They found their solution for this application in a Model 2836SS 36″ Stainless Steel Full Flow Air Knife Kit. The Full Flow Air Knife is the most compact design for any given length, and with rear ports for the compressed air supply, it was easy to conceal from the visitors’ sight. When smoke is introduced from behind, it gets pulled in (entrained), and discharges in a laminar, even curtain that the animated figures magically appear on. The extraordinarily low sound level contributes to the magic, as it can’t be heard over the din of eerie sound effects & music that are synonymous with the haunted house experience.

Compressed air flows through the inlet (1) to the Full Flow (left) or Standard (right) Air Knife, into the internal plenum. It then discharges through a thin gap (2), adhering to the Coanda profile (3) which directs it down the face of the Air Knife. The precision engineered & finished surfaces optimize entrainment of air (4) from the surrounding environment.

EXAIR Corporation has been in the business of providing quiet, safe, and efficient compressed air products for all kinds of applications for almost 39 years now. If you want to find out more about introducing more quietness, safety, efficiency…or magic…into your operation, give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
EXAIR Corporation
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