We discuss optimizing compressed air systems and starting all of them on your demand side. If you are new to the blog or to compressed air, this is an important place to start because it can put capacity back into your system and help prevent shutdowns due to excessive compressed air use. One of the keys to utilizing compressed air in applications is to ensure it is off when not needed. This is also a benefit of compressed air.
You see, you can use an electromechanical solenoid valve to rapidly turn compressed air off and on. Because it is compressed and will rapidly feed through a blowoff you can use this rapid off/on to your advantage within a facility. Rather than just having to let a blower stay on or wait for it to spool up and fill a large duct, the piping of a compressed air system can already be supplied, and the valve can be located very near to the blowoff “nozzle” which means you can get the work done with instant response time. And, any amount of gap in demand builds capacity back into your supply system.
The EXAIR Electronic Flow Control gives the ability to turn the compressed air off and on within 1/10th of a second. Don’t blink, you’ll miss it! That’s right, if you had an intermittent demand or even something that would benefit from repeated impacts of the air on the surface it can be done down to one tenth of a second with the EFC. Even if you just use this rapid off/on for blowoff on a continuous product and it works to where you don’t need the continuous you can save as much as 50% of the air going into what would otherwise be a continuous operation blowoff, assuming an on 1/10th and off 1/10th (of a second).
The other advantage to something like an Electronic Flow Control is that it simplifies the operators’s input to work correctly. There are no valves for them to physically turn on and off, no foot pedals to step on and energize the air, and no triggers to pull. While these all have their place, they lend themselves to variations in the length of time used or not used. Most processes in production environments don’t handle variables extremely well. Consistency is key and the EFC delivers on this point.
If you want to talk about how you can benefit from a rapid off/on of compressed air and put some capacity back into your system, contact an Application Engineer today.
Brian Farno
Application Engineer
BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF
1 – Amy from United States, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
