Tag: agricultural

From Field to Market: How EXAIR Helps Streamline Vegetable Processing

Published on by John BallLeave a comment

Homonyms are words that are pronounced and spelled the same but have different meanings.  In this blog, I will cover the word lettuce.  One meaning is the leafy vegetable and the other is money.  And I like to save both.  I have an agriculture application that I would like to share where EXAIR was able to supply different products to help save lettuce. 

PowerStream Liquid Nozzle

When vegetables come from the field, they need to be cleaned and packaged for delivery to grocery stores.  The first thing that they need to do is to wash the leaves to remove dirt, compost, and bugs.  They had drilled pipes to spray water onto the leaves, using a lot of water. They were looking to do it more economically. The vegetable packing house purchased the EXAIR PowerStream Liquid Nozzles, model DL8075SS, to do the washing.  These stainless steel nozzles were mounted on a manifold to spray water onto the lettuce leaves.  With the PowerStream nozzles, we can break the water into smaller droplet sizes to increase coverage and reduce water requirements.  Thus, saving money.

The next step would be to dry the lettuce.  They were using a blower-powered air knife, but they could not remove all the insects as it was not powerful enough.  Also, by blowing hotter air which was created by the blower, lettuce would start to brown much quicker.  To improve, they purchased a model 110036SS Stainless Steel Super Air Knife.  The Super Air Knife is an efficient, powerful way to blow compressed air.  With a 40:1 amplification ratio, it will draw in 40-parts of ambient air to 1-part compressed air.  From our Super Air Knife, we blow ambient temperature air, add mass to give a much higher force to remove the water and the insects, and save on compressed air consumption. 

To reduce spoilage, you must have the proper equipment.  For this company, they were able to improve their process to increase production.  And by utilizing less water and less compressed air, they were able to increase profit.  If you would like to improve your processes in packing houses, EXAIR has a variety of products that can help you.  You can contact an Application Engineer to discuss.  For the company above, more lettuce out the door meant more lettuce in their pockets. 

John Ball
Application Engineer
Email: johnball@exair.com
Twitter: @EXAIR_jb

Photo of Vegetables by akadarcee.  Pixabay content license.

Compressed Air Use In The Agriculture Industry

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

I didn’t grow up ON a farm, but more than a few of the kids I went to school with did. My wife’s grandpa had a farm, and one of her uncles still does. Farmers have always been the most diversely talented people I’ve ever known. They’re well versed in soil chemistry and plant biology. They have a keen understanding of climate & weather patterns which allows them to sow seed after the last frost in early spring, and gather their last harvest before the first frost of mid-to-late autumn. Most of them are also expert mechanics, welders, and plumbers as well, to avoid costly repair bills on equipment they operate in fairly harsh conditions. And the ones that raised livestock, I’d stack their veterinary knowledge & skills up against just about any vet’s office.

In my twelve years with EXAIR, I’ve had the pleasure of talking with many farmers & other folks in agricultural-type jobs, and a lot of the stuff they use our products for is downright fascinating. Here are two prime examples – one from an agricultural product provider, and one from an actual agricultural job:

*A company that makes irrigation drain pipe uses Model 2485 5″ Standard Air Wipe Kits to cool and dry their extruded 4″ pipe before cutting to length & packaging it for shipment. This replaced a blower operated setup that didn’t completely dry the corrugated outside diameter. The Air Wipe not only blew off almost all the water, all the time, but also allowed them to increase production speed by nearly 10%.

The turbulent air flow from the blower system (left) really just beats on the extruded surface, while the laminar flow of the EXAIR Super Air Wipe (right) strips & sweeps the surface clean & dry.

*Once fruit & vegetables are harvested, most of them go through some sort of cleaning process. EXAIR Super Air Knives are commonly used in conjunction with those processes. Sometimes they’re blowing loose dirt from, say, onions or potatoes, so they don’t turn the wash water into a mud bath. They’re also used to blow the wash & rinse water off, so they’re as dry as possible before packaging or processing. One particular customer uses Super Air Knives for the latter. By replacing blowers with a Model 110236SS 36″ Stainless Steel Super Air Knife Kit to dry freshly washed potatoes, they were able to increase the speed of conveyance…the laminar flow from the engineered Air Knife was better at blowing off the potatoes than the turbulent flow from the blower. Also, since the temperature of the Air Knife’s flow is the same as ambient temperature (because they entrain air from their surrounding at a rate of 40:1 to their compressed air consumption), this extended the time before spoilage. The warmer air from the blower (caused by friction in the rotating elements) was fostering the bacterial growth that leads to spoilage.

Increased potato production + longer shelf life = win/win.

Engineered compressed air products are widely used in agriculture (and, of course, many other industries) for their simplicity, durability, and reliability. If you’d like to find out how EXAIR products can make your life (or at least your job) easier, give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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Application Database: Agriculture.

Published on by John BallLeave a comment

EXAIR uses many different methods to connect with our customers.  We have our website, social media, blogs, publications etc.  We like to share solutions for some of the most common pneumatic problems in the industry.  EXAIR generated a large collection of application information where EXAIR products have solved problems and improved processes, and we placed them in a database.  We organized them by Application and by Industry.  In this blog, I will show you how to use our application database; specifically for agriculture.

The agricultural industry is an essential business for people around the world.  So, it is very important to reduce costs and improve processes.  EXAIR has engineered products that can help in these areas.  This can include spraying fungicide, conveying products, blowing compressed air, and monitoring pneumatic systems.  Compressed Air Systems are considered to be a fourth utility within industries because they use a large amount of energy.  Whether an air compressor uses electricity or fuel for portable units, it is important to use this system as efficiently as possible.  EXAIR has a library of different processes in which we already have improved in these areas safely and efficiently.  If you are part of the Agricultural industry, it can be beneficial for you to find the areas that we already improved.  It is a “been there, done that” solution that you can take an advantage of using. 

Here is how you can find this library.  First, you will have to sign into the EXAIR website.  Click HERE to log in.  Once you fill in the proper information, you can then retrieve a great number of resources about EXAIR products that we manufacture.   The Application database is located under the Resources drop-down tab (Reference photo below) and at Applications.

At the Application Search Library, we have over one thousand applications that we reference.  In the left selection pane, we organized them in alphabetical order under two categories, Application and Industry.

Scroll down in the Industry selection pane until you come to the sub-category: Agriculture.  If you do not find it, you can select the Expand button to open up more industries.  We have other applications as well that may relate to your specific process if you scroll up and down the list, like Food and Beverage as examples. 

Why is this important?  If you are a plant manager or owner, the value of the Application Database can help your current processes with pre-qualified results.  Within the Agriculture industry, simple solutions can be found to address those “nagging” issues that you see every day.  For crisis situations and shutdowns, EXAIR categorized these applications in a way to reference quickly and easily.  And since EXAIR has a high volume of stocked items, we can get the parts to you very fast so you can quickly be on your way to a solution.

In today’s market, companies are always looking for ways to cut cost, increase productivity, and improve safety.  EXAIR can offer engineered products to do exactly that.  With the “been there and done that” solutions already described in the Application Database; you can have confidence in finding a way in solving pneumatic issues.  If you do not sign up at http://www.EXAIR.com and take advantage of these offerings, you will be missing out on a great tool to optimize your compressed air system.  And if you did not find a solution inside our Application database, an Application Engineer at EXAIR is available. 

John Ball
Application Engineer
Email: johnball@exair.com
Twitter: @EXAIR_jb

316SS Sanitary Flange Air Operated Conveyors Pull Corn Meal Quality Samples

Published on by codybiehleLeave a comment

Agriculture, it’s a word that invokes a lot of imagery. From the vast rolling fields, to animals roaming, to a simple life of tending to the land. For some it is the perfect life of hard work and simple living. Agriculture can make one think of tractors, heavy equipment, silos, fencing, and much more. But there is one thing that does not typically come to mind, and that is compressed air. Even though compressed air is not commonly thought of being used in agriculture does not mean that it cannot be used. In fact, it can be very useful.

In one application a manufacturer of corn meal needed to take a sample of the product to test the moisture content and quality before it was loaded into a rail car. The lab tech use to have to go out to the silo to scoop up about a pint and transport it back to the lab to be tested. To eliminate the manual retrieval and delivery of the corn meal EXAIR recommended a model #163300-316 3″ St. St. Sanitary Flange Line Vac Kit and was sold to the customer. A system of 100ft of pipe was installed from the silo to the lab so that the test sample could be conveyed by the Line Vac directly to the lab to be tested. This simple fix improved the reliability of the sample and decreased the time it takes to grab a sample. Along with the added benefit that now the lab tech does not need to walk over and scoop the sample out of the container or off the ground.

EXAIR’s Family of Sanitary Flange Line Vacs

Line Vacs are a great product for conveying bulk material from point A to point B and excel with “bucket and ladder” type scenarios where personnel is manually loading or unloading batches of material or scrap. EXAIR’s Air Operated Conveyors have always been well suited for applications involving food as the internal components are smooth and can be cleaned out easily and sanitized. With a 316 Stainless Steel body the unit provides superior corrosion resistance and can withstand most caustic cleaners and oxidants. The flange style connection also makes it easy to hook up and remove for cleaning purposes.

Model 161200-316 – 316 Stainless Steel Sanitary Flange Line Vac

Sanitary Flange Line Vacs are all made from 316 Stainless Steel and come in four sizes: 1-1/2”, 2”, 2-1/2”, and 3”.

If you are interested in more applications, check out our application database on our Website. Or if you have any questions on our Line Vacs give us a call, we have a team of application engineers ready to answer your questions and recommend a solution for your applications.

Cody Biehle
Application Engineer
EXAIR Corporation
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