Author: Russ Bowman

Calculating Return On Investment

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Just because something works, doesn’t necessarily mean it works as well as it could. We talk to folks every day who have compressed air-operated devices that work OK, but they’re loud. Or they’re not compliant with safety regulations. Or they use too much compressed air. EXAIR has solutions to all of those issues, but it’s that last one that I want to spend some time on today.

A caller was using a drilled pipe to clean blow off a conveyor – it was 36″ wide, so the pipe had (72) 1/16″ diameter holes drilled, one every 1/2″ along the pipe length. It used compressed air at a rate of 261 SCFM with a supply pressure of 60psig. We can use a US Department of Energy thumb rule which states that it costs $0.25 to generate 1,000 Standard Cubic Feet of compressed air to determine the annual operating cost of this drilled pipe, which they operate eight hours a day, 250 days a year:

261 SCFM X 60 min/hr X 8 hr/day X 250 days/yr X $0.25/1,000 SCF = $7,830.00 annual cost

Here’s a typical drilled pipe that we tested for a customer in our Efficiency Lab.

A 36″ Super Air Knife only uses 82.8 SCFM @60psig. Using the same math:

82.8 SCFM X 60 min/hr X 8 hr/day X 250 days/yr X $0.25/1,000 SCF = $2,484.00 annual cost

Super Air Knife drying fruits and vegetables

Now we have the data to use our Return on Investment calculation:

Gain from investment: $7,830.00 (drilled pipe cost) – $2,484.00 (Super Air Knife cost) = $5,346.00

Cost of investment: 2024 price for a Model 110036 36″ Aluminum Super Air Knife = $938.00

A 470% annual return is spectacular by any measure. To further put that in perspective, let’s calculate how long it takes for the Air Knife to pay for itself. The 36″ Aluminum Super Air Knife costs $938.00 (2024 price), and the annual savings in compressed air cost are $5,346.00:

$938.00 (spent) ÷ $5,346.00 (saved/yr) = 0.18 years

Since we used 250 days – 5 days/week for 52 weeks, less 10 days for holidays, maintenance, etc.:

0.18 years X 250 days/year = 45 days

So, in about a month and a half, they saved as much as they spent on the Super Air Knife. We’ve worked with customers who have seen their return on investment in just a few days, or as long as a year or so. Regardless, if it costs less to operate, you’re still moving in the right direction. If you’d like to find out how much you can save – and how fast you can pay off your investment – you can do the math above, or you can use our Online Calculators, or you can give me a call.

Oh, and if you don’t have the air consumption data on what you’re using now, we can measure that for you in our Efficiency Lab. It’s a free service we offer, without obligation to purchase anything, for anyone who wants to know the performance level of their air-operated blow off devices.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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What’s So Great About EXAIR Safety Air Guns?

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Cheap to buy; expensive to operate. And it’s loud, to boot.
Precision VariBlast Safety Air Gun offers strong blow off while reducing air use & noise levels.

You can go to almost any hardware store and buy a $10-$20 air blow gun. It’s going to be loud when you pull the trigger, it’s not likely to be compliant with OSHA standards. AND, it’s going to cost more to operate than an engineered product like an EXAIR Safety Air Gun. I actually performed an Efficiency Lab test on such a blow gun recently. First thing I did was look for the manufacturer’s published data on air usage – there was none. Testing with our calibrated rotameter showed that it used 13.5 SCFM @80psig. This same customer had purchased a Model 1809SS-CS VariBlast Precision Safety Air Gun with our Pico Super Air Nozzle installed (and a Chip Shield, which made me really respect their safety game), which uses only 4.9 SCFM @80psig.

The VariBlast Precision Safety Air Guns cost them $136.00 each (2023 pricing). We used a US Department of Energy thumb rule which states that compressed air costs an average of $0.25 per 1,000 Standard Cubic Feet, and calculated that the blow guns they were using cost $158 annually, each, to operate 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year, with 3 hours of ‘trigger time’ a day:

13.5 SCFM X 60 min/hr X 3 hrs/day X 5 days/week X 52 weeks/year X $0.25/1,000 SCF = $157.95

Using the same math and substituting the 1809SS-CS’ air use, we see they only cost $58 per year to run:

4.9 SCFM X 60 min/hr X 3 hrs/day X 5 days/week X 52 weeks/year X $0.25/1,000 SCF = $57.33

And, again, since there are 14 of them, the customer is realizing an annual operating cost saving of over $800.00 a year!

At EXAIR, we’re in the business of making sure you get the most out of our products, and your compressed air system. If you’d like to find out what that might mean for you, give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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Atomizing Spray Nozzles In The Food Industry

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Every morning, I fry a couple of eggs, toast a couple of English muffins (or sandwich buns or croissants or even plain white bread in a pinch), prepare some sausage (or sometimes a Cincinnati staple called goetta), for a breakfast sandwich that rivals just about any fast food offering. The first thing I do is heat the skillet & spray it with a thin layer of cooking oil, even if I’m frying the sausage or goetta first.

Spraying a thin layer of cooking oil onto a cooking surface is also a great application for our Atomizing Spray Nozzles. We can accommodate a wide range of flows & pattern sizes, and with the No-Drip option, they can be turned off & on up to three times a second. This makes them popular in larger food processing facilities, which run the pans full of food through an oven on a conveyor, and route the pans back to the starting point to be refilled (after re-oiling) and through the oven again. All day long.

I had the pleasure of helping a caller recently who makes custom cakes, and wanted to automate the process of applying melted butter to their pans. They needed a quick ‘spritz’ of about 1/4 ounce into a 9″ diameter cake pan, and they wanted to supply the melted butter from an open, unpressurized container. For this, I specified a Model SR2040SS No-Drip Siphon Fed Round Pattern Atomizing Spray Nozzle. With a siphon height of 8″ (that means the liquid in the vessel is 8″ below the centerline of the Spray Nozzle), it’ll spray water at a rate of 5.3 gallons per hour, in an 8.8″ diameter pattern at a distance of 15″ away.

5.3 gal/hr ÷ 60 min/hr ÷ 60 sec/min X 128 oz/gal = 0.2 oz/sec, so a one second spray gets them really close to 1/4 oz.

We can work the same math for, say, a Flat Fan model to spray a rectangular sheet on the above-mentioned conveyor oven setup. Or an array of Narrow Angle Round models for a muffin pan.

142 distinct models. 8 different patterns. Liquid flow rates from 0.1 to 303 gallons per hour. If you’ve got a spraying application, EXAIR has an Atomizing Nozzle for you!

If you need a fine, controllable mist or spray that’ll give you reliable performance all day, every day, EXAIR has 142 distinct models of Air Atomizing Spray Nozzles, and almost two decades of experience in providing the best one for a particular application…give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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Reversible Drum Vac Overview

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If you need to move liquid into – or out of – a drum, you’ve got options. There are many types of pumps with electric motors that you can hook a suction hose up to, insert it through the bung connection on the drum lid (or even take the lid off if it’s removable), and turn the pump on. They even make pumps that look like long wands with motors on top that’ll actually insert through, and thread into that bung connection.

No electricity? No problem…you can hook a suction hose to an air-operated double diaphragm pump, and it’ll work an awful lot like the aforementioned electric-motor driven pump. You can even get one of those drum pumps that fit the bung in the lid that runs on compressed air.

Thing is, those electric motors are going to burn out sooner or later. Sooner if you let them get dirty & wet; later, if you’re disciplined about taking the great pains it requires to keep them clean & well maintained. And they ALL have moving parts that’ll wear out (especially those loud and GROSSLY inefficient air motors)…nothing, it seems, lasts forever. You might come close, though, if only you had something that didn’t run on electricity and had no moving parts…

With a simple turn of the knob, the Reversible Drum Vac can fill or empty a 55 gallon drum in 90 seconds!

Dear reader, allow me to introduce you to the EXAIR Reversible Drum Vac. Instead of using a motor (electric or air) to turn a pump shaft, or using air to move diaphragms back & forth, the Reversible Drum Vac has a venturi inside that uses compressed air to pull a vacuum on the drum. With a simple turn of the knob, the compressed air supply reverses (as advertised) and lightly pressurizes the drum to empty it. The Reversible Drum Vac has a float in the bottom that keeps you from overfilling the drum (while pumping in) and a light spring poppet that keeps you from over-pressurizing the drum (while pumping out).

Here are a few examples of what customers use the Reversible Drum Vac for:

EXAIR Reversible Drum Vac Systems come in a variety of sizes and configurations to meet the needs of most any application.
  • Laboratory operators in a chemical processing facility use Model 6296-5 Deluxe Mini Reversible Drum Vac Systems to pump out the waste tanks under the lab tables. They’re then wheeled to the main reclamation tanks for safe disposal.
  • Many machine shops use them to pump old coolant out of sumps for disposal. Some even use them to vacuum oil out of the collection trays when cutting oil is used for the machining process.
  • A civil engineering firm that makes small scale models of dams & bridges uses one to de-water caissons…the watertight retaining structures that allow them to install the foundations. They can’t be used to move the thousands of gallons of water from the actual caissons, but they work well for the smaller volumes in their scale models.
  • Foundries and other facilities that operate sand casting molds use them to clean up water leaks & spills around the molds. The ability to pick up the sand and the water, without any wear to the system, makes them preferable to electric shop vacuums.
  • A meat processing facility uses one to clean up myoglobin – the reddish liquid that many folks think is blood in their medium rare steaks (it’s actually a combination of water & the protein that carries oxygen to the cells, and starts to form quickly as the meat is butchered) – so the cuts of meat are as free from it as possible prior to packaging.

The Reversible Drum Vac generates a suction head of -96″H2O when supplied with compressed air at 80psig, which is more than enough vacuum for applications like those listed above. Some applications require higher vacuum; for those, we offer the High Lift Reversible Drum Vac Systems, which generate suction head of -180″H2O. Here are some examples of those applications:

EXAIR High Lift Reversible Drum Vac Systems come in different configurations for 30, 55, or 110 gallon drums.
  • A maker of bottled condiments (think barbecue sauce- or ketchup-like consistency) uses them to clean up accidents when bottles are overfilled, or a conveyor malfunction results in dispensing a bottle’s worth of condiment when there’s not a bottle under the nozzle.  The 20ft hose gives them the reach to service several production lines from one centrally located drum, and the two-way pumping action allows them to easily pump the drum into their waste collection system.
  • A precast concrete company uses one for various cleanup applications.  The High Lift RDV‘s suction head is needed, in particular for their hydraulic oil leaks & spills.
  • A ferry operator uses one to clean out the engine room bilge.  They put the High Lift RDV on a deck above the engine room…the 20ft hose extends down to the bilge to pump it out, and when the drum is full, it reaches to the main deck so the drum can be emptied into their waste recycling company’s receptacle.
  • A construction company uses one to clean up the slurry created during concrete cutting operations.  The High Lift RDV is able to keep up with the slurry from even their largest saws, and the 20ft hose allows them to keep the drum conveniently out of the cutting area.

If you’ve got an application that you could use a 2-way liquid pumping system on a drum for, give me a call. Oh, and now through the end of April 2024, we’ll give you a free Vac-u-Gun with any qualifying Industrial Housekeeping Products purchase!

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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