Tag: Air Knives

6 Steps to get the most out of your Compressed Air System: Engineered Products

Published on by Jordan T ShouseLeave a comment

If you’re reading the EXAIR Blog, you’re probably well aware that compressed air is the most expensive utility in an industrial environment. The average cost to generate 1000 Standard Cubic Feet of compressed air is $0.25. If you’re familiar with how much air you use on a daily basis, you’ll understand just how quickly that adds up.

To make matters worse, many compressed air systems waste significant amounts of compressed air just through leaks. According to the Compressed Air Challenge, a typical plant that has not been well maintained will likely have a leak rate of approximately 20%!! Good luck explaining to your finance department that you’re carelessly wasting 20% of the most expensive utility.

The six steps to optimizing your compressed air system is something we cover a fair amount on this blog. And there is a real reason for that. Yes, we sell compressed air products. But we are also aware compressed air costs money to generate, so using this source responsibly is very important.

This is where the 6 steps come into play, but today we are just covering Step 3. Which is upgrading your blow off, cooling and drying operations using engineered compressed air products. (If you want to read about the other 5 steps, check them out here, Step #1, Step #2, Step #4, Step #5, Step #6)

I compare step three to replacing your house windows. We recently got some prices to replace our windows, but along with that comes the cost savings we expect to get as they are better designed now than in the 1990ies to retain your temperature inside. Thus reducing the cost to cool and heat your home.

Similar to my “upgrade” to new windows, upgrading blow offs, cooling and drying operations using engineered compressed air products is Step 3 in EXAIR’s Six Steps To Optimizing Your Compressed Air System. We’ve assigned an order to these steps in accordance with basic good engineering practice & protocol, but it’s not necessary to follow them in any particular order. In fact, all six steps really don’t apply to every single compressed air system.

Step 3 does apply to most systems, though. I spent a fair amount of time in all sorts of industrial facilities in my previous roles, and almost all the time, regardless of the industry or the size of the facility, the maintenance and production part of the facility used air guns. However, I don’t recall ever seeing an engineered nozzle on one before I came to EXAIR. Since then, I’ve worked with a bunch of users to dramatically reduce compressed air consumption by replacing their cheap and inefficient air guns with EXAIR Safety Air Guns, or by retrofitting EXAIR Super Air Nozzles onto their existing air guns. We actually carry adapters to fit our Super Air Nozzles to a number of readily commercially available air guns for that very purpose.

In addition to air guns & nozzles, our Air Knives have a long history of replacing drilled pipes & pipe manifolds with inefficient nozzles used to make a curtain of air flow. The following chart details the savings you can get from the use of a 24″ Super Air Knife instead of similar devices for a 24″ wide air curtain:

Even though an electric powered blower will use less electricity than the amount of electricity an air compressor uses to supply an engineered product like the Super Air Knife, the maintenance costs make the total cost of ownership eclipse that of the engineered Air Knife.

Our Case Study Library documents many real-world situations where customers worked with us to gather & publish “before/after” documentation, proving the benefits of Step 3. I encourage you to check those out, and if you think you might have an opportunity to do a Case Study with us, we offer discounts or credit for that…give me a call.

Jordan Shouse
Application Engineer

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Creating Custom Solutions for Specific Applications

Published on by Al WooffittLeave a comment

At EXAIR we are proud of our ability to ship our stock and catalog products the same day or the next day on orders received before 2:00pm ET. If you need a replacement part, or a new solution altogether, we can likely get the product to you in no time at all. There are certain applications, however, where the solution is more specific, and our stock options are not going to work out best. There may be a need for a different material, or a specific geometry to get the results the customer is looking for. For instances like this, we work with our customers to create a special, non-stock option.

I was recently working with a customer that needed an Air Knife to cool their material coming out of a hot process. This is a common application for our Air Knives, but for this particular customer, the shape of the Air Knife wasn’t going to fit in their machine. After some discussion, we determined that a curved Air Knife was going to be the best fit (pun intended).

After the customer provided some initial specifications, we put a drawing together. With some back and forth, reviewing drawings, and signing off on final designs, we set to work, producing their specially designed product. Within a few weeks, we were able to provide the specific solution to meet their needs.

If you have an application that needs a more tailor-made solution, give us a call!

Al Wooffitt
Application Engineer

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Removing Coolant From Cold Rolling Operations

Published on by John BallLeave a comment

An overseas company had a cold rolling process where they would make metal sheets of different thicknesses and widths.  They were having issues with their machine removing the excess coolant from the surface that was used in the process.  Like with too many applications, they made their own home-made air knives.  They found that they had reduced production rates, increased quality failures, and amplified noise levels.  They contacted EXAIR to help resolve these issues.    

To go into the details of the application, the cold rolling process uses work rolls to “squeeze” the metal to a thinner gauge.  This squeezing creates heat up to 350oF (177oC).  So, before each work roll, they would spray a coolant to help remove the heat.  The amount of coolant is very important to get the proper cooling and metal gauge.  After the work rolls, the coolant has to be removed before the next work roll operation.  Their system was designed for 3,300 ft/min (1000 m/min), but they could only run it at half the speed as they could not remove enough coolant from the surface.  For each work roll, they used three homemade compressed air knives that were made from 54” (1372mm) pipes with drilled holes.  They laid one on top and one on bottom just after the work rolls.  After the trial, they had to add another one on top to try and remove the remaining coolant that was missed by the first one.  Each home-made knife used 440 SCFM (744 M3/hr) of compressed air at 100 PSIG (6.9 bar) during the cold rolling operation.

Super Air Knife

With similar solutions, EXAIR has a great product for non-contact wiping for flat surfaces, the Super Air Knives.  They use compressed air to generate a force at varying degrees.  With the engineered design, we are able to add free ambient air at a rate of 40:1.  For every one part of compressed air, we can entrain 40 parts of ambient air.  By adding this mass to the airstream, we can generate a hard-hitting force.  Generally, with a drilled pipe, they have an entrainment near 4 to 5:1 which requires more compressed air to get that same force.  Also, with the Super Air Knives, we can generate a laminar flow to give an even force across the entire length. 

For this application, I was worried about the setup of their home-made air knives.  With the position of being straight across, the coolant liquid could build up to a heavier amount in front of the knives, which could allow for some of the coolant to bypass.  This would be the reason for the second drilled pipe on top.  The bottom unit worked fine as gravity was helping to remove the coolant from the surface.  But they were using a lot of compressed air with high noise levels.  I was able to help them to create a more effective blow-off design and to save a lot of compressed air. 

Chevron Style

In my discussion, I mentioned that with high-speed operations, the setup is important for great non-contact wiping.  For this customer, I recommend the Chevron style which mounts two Super Air Knives as an inverted “V”.  Now we can cut the amount of coolant in half.  Half of the sheet means half of the weight of coolant.  For the top, I recommend two pieces, model 110036 36” (914mm) Aluminum Super Air Knife, and a single piece, model 110054 54” (1,372mm) Aluminum Super Air Knife, for the bottom.  We were able to solve their issues with their cold rolling process. 

As they started their operation, they were able to increase the production rates, and removed the need for the extra air knife.  With the Super Air Knives, we were able to save them 877 SCFM (1,490 M3/hr) of compressed air at 100 PSIG (6.9 bar), as compared to the total amount of 1,320 SCFM (2,232 M3/hr) for the three home-made air knives.  With a 24-hour operation, the Super Air Knives saved them a lot of money.  The Return on Investment, ROI, was less than 30 days.  As a note, the Super Air Knife only has a noise level of 72 dBA at 100 PSIG. 

If you are looking to improve your blow-off application to increase production rates, reduce waste and improve safety, the EXAIR Super Air Knives can provide that solution.  With the customer above, the development happened immediately with a short ROI.  If you have a similar application and want to discuss it with an Application Engineer at EXAIR, you can contact us directly.  We’d be happy to help you.

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

Photo: Steel Roll Alignment by Jean-Etienne Minh-Duy Poirrier.  Creative Commons 2.0

Super Air Knife Solves Condensation Labeling Issue for Pharmaceutical Manufacturer

Published on by Tyler DanielLeave a comment

In the pharmaceutical industry, it’s rather critical to ensure products are appropriately marked and labeled. This allows for proper tracing of the product throughout the manufacturing process and ensures the end customer has the necessary information they need on the container the products are packaged in.

For some processes in this industry, labeling applications present a few problems. While in many cases the problems are attributed to static electricity, I recently worked on an application for removing condensation prior to a labeling process. While this is a common application we help serve in the Food & Beverage Industry, this one was a first for me with regards to pharmaceuticals.

The manufacturer of a variety of different pharmaceutical products used for animals was having an issue with a few of their products they produce. They had a line that processes a variety of different styles of products, but with one particular type they were having this issue with the label application.

Some of their products must be held at relatively low temperatures. Throughout the filling process they are held within a refrigerated zone. The area in the facility where the labels are applied is also climate-controlled, but not completely refrigerated. The bottles are only in this location for the brief labeling process before being placed back into coolers, but it was not possible for them to relocate the labeling process elsewhere.

The issue they were having was occurring during the warmer, humid days of summer. As the bottles were placed into the labeling machine, condensation would form that prohibits the label from correctly adhering. This led to a lot of rework and manual label application, while also contributing to some waste as products were held outside of refrigeration for too long.

They began seeking out a solution for blowing off the residual condensation prior to labeling and contacted EXAIR for a solution. To combat this problem, we implemented a two-tiered blowoff solution. There was a rotating table where the product is initially held, (2) Model 110024SS-316 Stainless Steel Super Air Knives were used to provide an initial blowoff inside the contained area. This took care of some of that initial condensation, but left some bottles with still a bit of residual moisture that was still creating issues.

We added a Model 120020 ¾” Super Air Amplifier to blow on each individual bottle immediately prior to labeling to take care of any condensation that formed after the initial blowoff. With both of these solutions in place, the condensation is immediately stripped off the outside of the vials and allows for a clean label application each and every time.

EXAIR offers a wide range of products that can be used for blowoff. Options are available in 316 Stainless Steel from stock for a variety of applications in both the Food and Pharmaceutical Industries.

For help selecting the best products for your process, get in contact with one of EXAIR’s Application Engineers today.

Tyler Daniel, CCASS

Application Engineer

E-mail: TylerDaniel@EXAIR.com

X: @EXAIR_TD