Author: Russ Bowman

It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year…

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One could make a good point about “The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year” being right now because…well, the song just says so, right? I can get on board with that, because I’m the world’s biggest sucker for Christmas music:

Of course, that song was used in one of my favorite ad campaigns of all time to describe a season that started a few months earlier:

But I’m going to have to go with “right now” not only for the Christmas music, but for my personal favorite EXAIR seasonal promotion:

Right now, through the end of the year, EXAIR will give you a Safety Air Gun with any Super Air Knife purchase. Not only do you get THE most efficient and quietest compressed air blowing product on the market today (we have data to back that up from a wide variety of products & devices that customers have sent in for Efficiency Lab testing), we’re going to sweeten the deal with free stuff.

First, let’s talk about the Super Air Knives:

  • They come in lengths from 3″ to 9ft. No matter how small, or big, your blowoff needs are, we’ve got you covered. If you need something longer than 9ft, they can be coupled together for a continuous, laminar airflow curtain as long as you need it to be.
Air Knife Coupling Bracket Kit
  • We make them in low cost, lightweight aluminum, tough & corrosion resistant Type 303 Stainless Steel, even tougher & more corrosion resistant Type 316 Stainless Steel, and PVDF (polyvinylidene fluoride) thermoplastic with Hastelloy hardware & PTFE shims for the highest level of corrosion resistance available.
PVDF Super Air Knife Kits include the Air Knife itself (PVDF body, Hastelloy C-276 hardware, and PTFE Shims,) a PTFE Shim Set, an Automatic Drain Filter Separator, and Pressure Regulator.
  • They’re efficient and quiet — for the same reason. See, the compressed air supply exits through a precise, narrow slot between the Cap & Body, which is precision finished, generating a 40:1 entrainment ratio. That means that for every SCFM of compressed air that the Super Air Knife uses, it entrains 40 SCFM of air from the surrounding environment…THAT’S efficiency. In doing so, that entrained air forms a low velocity boundary layer around the powerful, high velocity primary air stream. This layer serves to attenuate the sound level of that hard-hitting curtain of air, resulting in a sound level of only 69dBA.

And, if you order before 12/31/2025, we’ll throw in a FREE EXAIR Soft Grip Safety Air Gun, fitted with a Super Air Nozzle. If you’re using a loud, inefficient air gun for handheld blowoff, you really need to try one of these. They use the primary compressed air stream to entrain ‘free’ air from the surrounding environment as well, which generates a low velocity boundary layer for sound reduction too. The Super Air Nozzle is well suited for a wide range of industrial blowoff applications, and the Soft Grip Safety Air Gun is ideal for hours of continuous use without fatigue.

EXAIR Super Air Nozzles entrain an enormous amount of air from the surrounding environment, making them efficient, and quiet.

Need something right away? EXAIR has you covered there too: all of these (and pretty much any of our other Intelligent Compressed Air Products) are on the shelf and ready to ship, same day, with orders received by 2pm EST. If you’ve got a blowoff application that you’d like to find a safe, quiet, and efficient solution for, we can help…give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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What’s So Great About Thermostat Control for EXAIR Cabinet Cooler Systems?

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EXAIR Cabinet Cooler Systems are a durable & reliable way to protect electrical enclosures (and the components they contain) from heat damage. All you need is compressed air…

Compressed air goes in; cold air comes out of the Vortex Tube and is circulated through the enclosure. The Vortex Tube’s hot flow and the warm exhaust from the enclosure are vented through the Cabinet Cooler’s body.

…and as long as the cooling capacity of the Cabinet Cooler System is equal to or greater than the heat load of the enclosure, everyone’s happy, right?

Well, almost. I mean, it’s great that the vital components inside the enclosure aren’t getting too hot, but if it’s getting colder than it needs to be inside, then you’re using compressed air when you don’t have to. And compressed air is EXPENSIVE.

If you’re talking to an EXAIR Application Engineer about panel cooling, we’re going to talk about Thermostat Control too. We have two options for that:

Thermostat, optional Mounting Bracket & Locknut, and Solenoid Valve (120VAC, 240VAC, or 24VDC)

Thermostat Control consists of a bimetallic probe-type Thermostat, spliced in to the ‘hot’ lead of a Solenoid Valve that’s plumbing into the compressed air supply of the Cabinet Cooler. These come preset at 95°F (35°C), which is based on the 104°F (40°C) temperature limit published by many manufacturers of electrical & electronic components. The setpoint temperature CAN be lowered (at the factory or in the field) if any particular component(s) need a cooler environment to operate in. It can also be raised, if everything in the enclosure can handle a higher temperature. THAT can save a good amount of compressed air (which, again, is EXPENSIVE.)

Operation is pretty simple: when the temperature starts to rise inside the enclosure, two dissimilar metal strips that are bonded together inside the thermostat start to thermally expand. Because they’re made of different metals, they expand at different rates, which makes the strips bend until they contact. This completes the electrical circuit to the Solenoid Valve’s coil, opening the valve to start operation of the Cabinet Cooler. As the temperature subsides and cold air flows into the enclosure, the two metal strips contract & straighten out, detaching the strip and the contact, which causes the Solenoid Valve to close, until temperature rises to the setpoint again.

EXAIR’s ETC Electronic Temperature Control provides the same function, but with some notable advantages:

EXAIR NEMA 4X 316SS Cabinet Cooler System with Electronic Temperature Control is installed on a control panel in a pharmaceutical plant.
  • A Type J Thermo couple is wired to a solid state temperature controller to sense & control the temperature. It’ll hold +/- 1°F of the setpoint temperature, as opposed to the +/-2°F accuracy range for the bimetallic Thermostat.
  • The LED readout provides constant indication of the temperature inside the enclosure. Personnel can verify, at a glance, that proper cooling is being applied. This is of great benefit to users who regularly monitor & log readings like this on enclosures with critical equipment inside, like nuclear power plants.
  • Push button control allows for on-the-fly adjustment of the setpoint temperature. This, along with the +/-1°F accuracy range, allows users to precisely set the desired temperature to a point just slightly under the maximum rating for the electronics, which, as mentioned above, can result in a reduction in compressed air consumption and hence, operating cost.
  • There’s also a calibration offset feature, which is handy if the Cabinet Cooler System is being installed on an enclosure with other temperature sensing equipment. This uses the push button controls to match the displayed temperature on the ETC to that of the existing equipment. It can also be used to verify the calibration of the ETC, which is another great benefit to users responsible for maintaining critical equipment.

As an EXAIR Application Engineer, it’s my goal to help you get the most out of our products, and your compressed air system. A big part of that is making sure you don’t use any more compressed air than you have to. If you’re ready to start saving, give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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What’s So Awful About A Drilled Pipe For A Conveyor Blowoff?

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A technician from a company that performs comprehensive audits of compressed air systems called me with a sad, sad story. A client had just installed a brand-new state-of-the-art rotary scroll compressor with a variable speed drive…they were going all-out on efficiency, which is great. During the technician’s walk-through, however, he noticed a blowoff on a conveyor belt — they actually heard it before they could see it — a black iron pipe with a series of holes drilled along the length, plumbed with compressed air being supplied, unregulated, from a 100psig header.

The pipe was 18″ long and had 30 holes, 1/8″ diameter each, drilled along the length. From the table below, we can presume that this drilled pipe was consuming as much as 475.8 SCFM:

I say “as much as 475.8 SCFM” because the technician noted the holes were simply drilled through, they weren’t rounded, so I calculated the flow from a 1/8″ orifice at 100psig (26.0 CFM) with a 0.61 multiplier for sharp edges orifices. Also, the inlet pressure of the drilled pipe is not known. With a 1″ pipe supplying it, the flow could be limited to around 350 SCFM, due to line loss in the pipe.

The technician first asked about installing Air Nozzles in the drilled pipe. That’d mean drilling those holes out and tapping them individually. This COULD be done, and the drilled pipe could be fitted with 30 Model 1110-PEEK Nano Super Air Nozzles, with an air consumption of 8.3 SCFM @80psig each, for a total of 249 SCFM. That’s a significant reduction, but also a lot of work on the drilled pipe. I recommended replacing it entirely with a Super Air Knife.

A Model 110018 18″ Aluminum Super Air Knife consumes only 52.2 SCFM @80psig — almost an order of magnitude reduction! Let’s do the math on the costs:

First, the drilled pipe: Let’s give all the benefit of the doubt here and assume that the line loss had indeed limited the air consumption to 350 SCFM. Operating 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year, and using the US Department of Energy’s estimate that compressed air costs $0.25 per 1,000 Standard Cubic Feet used, the annual operating cost of the drilled pipe was $10,920.00:

350 SCFM X 60 min/hr X 8 hrs/day X 5 days/week X 52 weeks/year X $0.25/1,000 SCF = $10,920.00

Drilling & tapping those holes for EXAIR Nano Super Air Nozzles (8.3 SCFM ea X 30 = 249 SCFM total) would result in an annual operating cost of $7,768.80:

249 SCFM X 60 min/hr X 8 hrs/day X 5 days/week X 52 weeks/year X $0.25/1,000 SCF = $7,768.80

Replacing the drilled pipe with an EXAIR 18″ Super Air Knife (52.2 SCFM) drops the annual operating cost even further, to $1,628.64:

52.2 SCFM X 60 min/hr X 8 hrs/day X 5 days/week X 52 weeks/year X $0.25/1,000 SCF = $1,628.64

To put that further into perspective, the 2025 List Price for an 18″ Aluminum Super Air Knife is $533.00. It costs almost $9,300.00 per year LESS to operate than the drilled pipe. That means the Air Knife will have paid for itself in operating costs in just under 21 days.

To put that even FURTHER into perspective, the ~300 SCFM reduction in compressed air consumption is approximately 75HP worth of a typical industrial air compressor load. It’s not uncommon for a mid-to-large sized company to have more than one air compressor, and 50HP is a common size for a backup compressor. If that was the case in the facility that my technician caller was auditing, he’d be letting them know that this $533.00 investment that’s going to save them over $9,000.00 a year is ALSO going to allow them to shut down one of their air compressors. Completely.

So, THAT’S what’s so awful about a drilled pipe. If you have any in your facility, we should talk.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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Video Blog: Chip Trapper Rebuild Kits

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EXAIR introduces Rebuild Kits for our 30, 55, and 110 Gallon Chip Trapper Systems.

These Rebuild Kits are for standard and High Lift Chip Trapper Systems.

Here are links to two other video blogs that are referenced in this video:

The Importance of Proper Supply Plumbing For Compressed Air Products

How To Rebuild Your Reversible Drum Vac

At EXAIR, we’re here to make sure you get the most out of our products, and your compressed air system. If you have questions, give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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