Tag: air savings calculator

EXAIR’s Calculator Library

Published on by bdwagesLeave a comment

If there is one thing you can always count on it’s a good calculator, and EXAIR offers you 3 — right on our website!!! The calculator library consists of an Air Savings Calculator, an EFC Calculator, and a Cabinet Cooler sizing calculator. All 3 of these add exceptional value and insight into our products. Let’s take a minute and look at each of these calculators in a little more detail.

The Air Saving Calculator allows you to compare a current product, to one of our products based upon overall cost. In order to make this effective for you, you will need to know the SCFM that your current solution is using. With that information, we can factor in the cost of our product and the SCFM consumption of this new solution, and give you an Air and Cost savings number. For example, if you are using a 1/4″ open pipe for blow off, you would be using @ 40 SCFM (not going to mention the OSHA violations – that’s for another blog). By placing one of our Super Air Nozzles on this open pipe, we will save you so much air (SCFM) that you can quickly see (above) that this one nozzle, can save you up to $1350 per year… One Nozzle!!!

The next calculator is the EFC calculator. An EFC is an Electronic Flow Control that can help you quickly automate your process. The EFC will allow you to use air only when it’s necessary and cut down on consumption. For example, if your conveyor has dead space between products, the EFC will shut the air flow off during the dead space. The calculator will tell you how much money you can save by installing the EFC. This will even tell you how long it will take to pay off the initial cost of the EFC unit. To use this calculator you will need the SCFM being consumed, the % of time that the product needs to be on, the purchase price of the EFC (this varies by size, call for details, or see on the link), and your cost of compressed air. We have $0.25 in this blank as a general standard, but if you know your actual, you will get a more concise answer. Your cost could be much higher, I’d be surprised if it is lower. The Example to the left shows the effects of a $1200 EFC that runs a product at 80 SCFM, and needs to be on 45% of the day. The EFC turns off the air the other 55% of the day when there is no reason to run the air. This pays for itself in 76 days, and adds $3960 to the bottom line each and every year.

The 3rd and final calculator that EXAIR offers online is the most used. It is our Cabinet Cooler System Calculator. Electrical cabinets get hot, and will overheat your electronics. Our Cabinet Coolers are the most efficient method to cool these cabinets, and eliminate electronic damage from overheating. There are no moving parts in these Cabinet Coolers, and the Vortex based system cools these with little to no maintenance. You simply need to supply these with clean, dry, compressed air. As you can imagine, these cabinets come in all sizes, and there are all sorts of various electronics that can be inside of these. We need the measurements and temperatures so that we can calculate the correct size Cabinet Cooler system for you. Our Cabinet Coolers have large size differences, from as little as 4 SCFM and 275 Btu/hr, up to 80 SCFM and 5600 Btu/hr, and we can go larger than this if necessary. The good thing about this calculator is that all of the information you need to enter is readily available to you as long as you have a a tape measure and a thermometer.

We do encourage everyone to take advantage of these on-line tools, however always remember that experienced application engineers like me, are here M-F 7AM-4PM EST to help you in any way possible.

Thank you for stopping by,

Brian Wages

Application Engineer

EXAIR Corporation
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Cover photo by Peggy_Marco licensed by Pixabay

Save Your Compressed Air Today with These Simple Methods

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

When discussing ROI, return on investment, for an industrial compressed air system it is necessary to  understand what it costs to produce compressed air.  Generally we calculate that it costs .25 cents to produce 1,000 SCF (Standard Cubic Feet) of compressed air here in the Midwest of the United States. For our example let’s consider a typical 250 HP industrial compressor running 24 hours per day/5 days per week for 52 weeks.  This compressor can generate 374,400,000 SCF per year, using the industry standard utility cost for the Midwest of .25 cents per 1,000 SCF it will cost $93,600 to produce that volume of compressed air.

To avoid wasting money on compressed air generation it is extremely important to eliminate unintended or wasteful compressed air use in your plant. The two main offenders are leaks and open tube blow-offs.  While soapy water is a good method for discovering leaks, EXAIR offers the Ultrasonic Leak Detector.  This handy device allows leaks to be detected at distances of up to 20′ away! Also consider how safe and convenient it is to find leaks in overhead pipes while standing on the ground instead of on a ladder. Using a tool like this to do an entire system leak audit can easily result in many small leaks being identified and when fixed result in a large savings.

open tubes
Thirteen Open Tube Blow-Offs

Now let’s look at what an open pipe or tube may consume. A single 1/4″ OD copper tube can use 33 SCFM @ 80 PSIG inlet pressure.  Using the manifold pictured above as our example with 13 open tubes, each tube can consume 33 SCFM @ 80 PSI inlet pressure. With 13 open tubes running 24 hours a day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks per year equates to a total consumption of  160,617,600 SCF annually.  If we installed the EXAIR model 1100 Super Air Nozzle  using a simple compression fitting we would reduce the air consumption dramatically.  The EXAIR 1100 Super Air Nozzle consumes 14 SCFM @ 80 PSIG inlet pressure, running 24 hours a day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks per year equates to a total consumption of 68,140,800 SCF annually.  That change will save you 92,476,800 SCF annually which is equal to $23,119.20 and 24.7% of air compressor capacity!  These calculations are all based on continuous running applications, if intermittent operation is possible consider the EXAIR Electronic Flow Control for even greater savings.  The EXAIR Electronic Flow Control combines a photoelectric sensor with timing control that limits compressed air use by turning it off when no part is present

Open pipe blow offs also violate OSHA standard 29 CFR 1910.242(b) requirement for using compressed air for cleaning when pressurized above 30 PSIG. Not to mention they generally are louder than 90 dBA, which is the maximum allowable noise exposure without hearing protection under OSHA standard 29 CFR – 1910.95 (a). The EXAIR engineered Super Air Nozzle is a great way to avoid a OSHA fine.

A great product that will help you keep your fingers on the pulse of compressed air consumption and demand is by incorporating the EXAIR Digital Flow Meter.  This handy item mounts directly to the pipe.  The digital display shows the amount of compressed air being used in any leg of your distribution system.  The Digital Flow Meter is offered in sizes for 1/2″ – 4″ Schedule 40 Iron Pipe and 3/4″ – 4″ Copper Pipe.  It also is available with the Summing Remote Display that is prewired with a 50′ cable, it is powered by the Digital Flow Meter and with a push of the button will display either the current compressed air consumption, consumption for the previous 24 hours or the total cumulative usage.

The Digital Flowmeters are also available with wireless capability using the ZigBee mesh network protocol, data can be passed from meter to meter to extend the distance over which the wireless system can operate.  Each meter has a range of up to 100′ (30 meters). Or you can opt for the USB Data Logger option.  The USB Data Logger can store approximately 9 hours of readings if set to sample once every second or up to 2 years if sampled every 12 hours.

If you would like to talk about any of the quiet EXAIR Intelligent Compressed Air® products or our line of Optimization Products, feel free to contact me or any EXAIR  Application Engineer.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
EXAIR Corporation
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EXAIR’s Return on Investment For One Engineered Air Nozzle is Amazing!

Published on by Jordan T ShouseLeave a comment

Return on Investment (ROI) is a measure of the gain (preferably) or loss generated relative to the amount of money that was invested.  ROI is typically expressed as a percentage and is generally used for financial decisions, examining the profitability of a company, or comparing different investments.  It can also be used to evaluate a project or process improvement to decide whether spending money on a project makes sense.  The formula is shown below-

ROI
ROI Calculation
  • A negative ROI says the project would result in an overall loss of money
  • An ROI at zero is neither a loss or gain scenario
  • A positive ROI is a beneficial result, and the larger the value the greater the gain
1100group
Our catalog publishes most products’ performance and specification data for a compressed air supply pressure of 80psig.

Example – installing a Super Air Nozzles (14 SCFM compressed air consumption) in place of 1/4″ open pipe (33 SCFM of air consumption consumption) .  Using the Cost Savings Calculator on the EXAIR website, model 1100 nozzle will save $1,710 in energy costs. The model 1100 nozzle costs $42, assuming a $5 compression fitting and $45 in labor to install, the result is a Cost of Investment of $92.00. The ROI calculation for Year one is-

ROI2

ROI = 1,759% – a very large and positive value.  Payback time is only 13 working days!

If you have questions regarding ROI and need help in determining the gain and cost from invest values for a project that includes an EXAIR Intelligent Compressed Air® Product, feel free to contact EXAIR and myself or one of our Application Engineers can help you determine the best solution.

Jordan Shouse
Application Engineer

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Air Savings Calculator

Published on by Jordan T ShouseLeave a comment

I received an email from an engineer that was looking at our Super Air Nozzles.  They currently were using four blow-off lines that were made from 6mm ID copper tubes. The system was designed to blow out holes after machining.  The engineer was in charge of the task of optimizing 25 machining stations similar to this one.  He was familiar with EXAIR products from his previous employment, and he recognized the waste of compressed air by using open pipe.  He purchased four Nano Super Air Nozzle, model 1110SS, for a trial.  He was impressed with the performance, the low sound level, and the engineered design in safety.  But, for upper management in his company, he had to show a cost savings in order to change all the stations in the facility.  He asked me to help him in calculating the compressed air savings.

nano nozzle

He gave me some additional details about their application.  He was using the compressed air about 30% of the time throughout an 8 hour day at a pressure of 80 PISG.  He wanted to present the savings per day, week, and year as well as the payback period in his evaluation.  I have performed many of these calculations for other customers and was happy to help.  It is sometimes easier to speak in terms of savings, as everyone can relate to money, especially management.

Knowns:

Flow: 1110SS Nano Super Air Nozzle – 8.3 SCFM at 80 PSIG

Flow:  6mm ID copper tube – 42 SCFM at 80 PSIG

This is where the COST SAVINGS CALCULATOR on our website shines!

The Calculator tells us you will see a ROI (Return on investment) is less than 5 days! And will save you $3,033.00 over a full year on compressed air generation cost alone!

Don’t be fooled by the initial cost of a tube, pipe, drilled holes, or a substandard nozzle.  You can see by the facts above, if you use any additional compressed air in your blow-off application, it will cost you a lot of money in the long run.  If you need any help in calculating how much money EXAIR products can save you, you can use our Air Savings Calculator from our website, or you contact an Application Engineer at EXAIR.  We will be happy to help you.

Jordan Shouse
Application Engineer

Send me an email
Find us on the Web 
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Twitter: @EXAIR_JS