Tag: compressed air cooling

What’s So Great About The Adjustable Spot Cooler?

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

EXAIR Adjustable Spot Coolers are ideally suited to a number of applications that need a flow of cold air on demand. Different applications will require more or less flow, and higher or lower temperatures. Let’s say you’re trying to cool an object to ambient temperature with a Model 3825 Adjustable Spot Cooler supplied with compressed air at 100psig and 70°F, but it’s not cooling the object as fast as you’d like. You can:

  • Increase the supply pressure, if possible. With a 100psig inlet pressure to the Adjustable Spot Cooler, you’re getting 20 SCFM of cold flow, at 16°F (assuming it’s set to an 80% Cold Fraction, which is usually ideal for spot cooling.) If you can get it to 120psig, you’ll increase the cold flow from 20 SCFM (80% of the 25 SCFM it’s using at 100psig) to 23.4 SCFM (80% of the 29.3 SCFM it’ll use at 120psig). And it’ll be colder (it’ll produce air with a 55°F temperature drop @120psig, vs 54°F @100psig).
EXAIR Vortex Tube Performance Chart – this is where the above – and below – ‘facts & figures’ come from.
  • Decrease Cold Fraction. Depending on the object’s size, material(s) of construction, amount of surface area available for heat transfer, etc., you could improve the cooling rate with lower temperature air, even if there’s less of it. If it’s particularly small in relation to the cold air flow pattern, a portion of that cold air flow might pass by without removing any heat at all. So, decreasing the temperature of the cold air that IS working will increase your rate of heat transfer. This is done by turning the knob of the Temperature Control Valve:
Turning the knob (2) counterclockwise opens the Temperature Control Valve, letting more of the supply flow (1) out of the hot end (3), and less of it to flow to the cold end (4). This also lowers the temperature of the cold air flow.
  • Change the Generator. The Adjustable Spot Cooler comes with a 25 SCFM Generator installed, but 15-R and 30-R Generators are included as well. Replacing the 25 SCFM Generator with a 30 SCFM Generator makes it use 30 SCFM @100psig, but you’ll increase the cold flow from 20 SCFM to 24 SCFM, assuming you leave it set at an 80% Cold Fraction. Keep in mind, though, that you can lower the Cold Fraction to get the same amount of cold flow as you were getting from the 25 SCFM Generator, but now it’ll be colder. If you open the Temperature Control Valve to a 70% Cold Fraction, you’ll reduce the cold flow to 21 SCFM of cold flow, but now it’ll be -1°F.

Everyone here at EXAIR wants you to get the most out of our products. If you’d like to find out more about how to do that, give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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Hot Air In The Aerospace Industry

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

Mankind’s adventures in aviation began with hot air, and it’s still kind of a big deal (for one particular EXAIR customer, that is) today.

How it started: In the 1780s, two French brothers, Joseph and Étienne Montgolfier, worked in their family’s paper mill. They noticed, along with everyone else, that pieces of paper were sometimes carried airborne in billows of smoke from the fires that heated the boilers. But unlike everyone else, they became curious as to why this happened…and how they might exploit this strange phenomenon to send something more substantial than some paper scraps through the air.

After a good deal of experimentation and trips “back to the drawing board” (they thought it was the smoke, not the heat, that caused the rise for a while), they began making public demonstrations of their first successful hot-air balloons in the summer of 1783. By autumn, having flown a sheep, a duck, and a rooster in a tethered balloon (to an altitude of about 1,500 feet on a flight that lasted about 8 minutes), they constructed a balloon large enough for two humans which flew successfully for almost half an hour, to a height of 3,000 feet. Early enthusiasts who came out to witness some of these flights included King Louis XVI, Queen Marie Antoinette, and American statesman (and quite the inventor himself) Benjamin Franklin.

The Montgolfier brothers decorated their balloons with the fleur-de-lis, zodiac symbols, and portraits of the King. I think it says a lot about ballooning that nowadays we have Sylvester the Cat, Tweety Bird, and even Spider-Pig.

How it’s going: I’m not going to lie; your level of fascination with the rest of this blog will depend on how fascinating you find the phenomenon of the Vortex Tube…which was, in fact, discovered by another French inventor, Georges Ranque:

The unique physical phenomenon of the Vortex Tube principle generates cold – and hot – air instantly, and for as long – or short – a time as needed.

Most Vortex Tube applications involve the use of the cold air flow, but a number of customers do indeed use the hot air flow. A material supplier to the aircraft & aerospace industry makes a flexible, porous strand of material that, after fabrication, passes through a wash tank prior to cutting to size. They wanted to speed up the drying time, but it was impractical to use electrically powered hot air blowers or heat guns. By using an EXAIR Model 3275 Large Vortex Tube set to a 70% Cold Fraction, they’re able to blow a little over 22 SCFM of 220°F air onto the strand, which effectively dries it to their specification, quickly & safely.

The EXAIR Vortex Tube. Cold air from one end; hot air from the other. Fully adjustable. You can use either…it’s fine with us; whatever you need.

Other EXAIR products that have been notably popular in the aerospace industry are engineered Air Nozzles, Static Eliminators, Air Amplifiers, and some even use Vortex Tubes & Spot Cooling Products for their COLD air flow. If you’d like to find out more about getting the most out of your compressed air system like the folks in the aerospace industry do, give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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EXAIR Case Study: Tube Cooling with the Adjustable Spot Cooler!

Published on by Jordan T ShouseLeave a comment

EXAIR has an extensive library of Case Studies for your reference to learn about how our products can help. The library is organized by product, so you can easily find the information and product you are interested in. These case studies summarize how our customers have purchased, used, and benefited from our products and their implementation. These studies focus on our products and our customers’ projects. We keep our customers anonymous and only use photos, details and data that are approved to be shared.
Here is an example of my latest case study!

APPLICATION GOAL: Customer is an OEM who builds 20 automated systems every year. One of the most time-consuming applications is heating and bending Teflon tubes that route fluids around the system. They wanted to speed up the time it took to do this, and increase the accuracy of the bends.

BEFORE EXAIR: When forming Teflon tubing for plumbing runs inside these large processing machines, the tubing needs to be heated with a heat gun to soften the tube to allow for forming. After forming, the tube must cool down to hold its shape. Cooling time can take approximately 6 minutes per bend. Alternatively, ice-water-soaked rags can be used, which may decrease the time down to 2–3 minutes.  However, there is no guarantee that the form will hold at the precise angle and may need to be reformed, which starts the process over again. Also, ice water and rags create a mess and can cause a slipping hazard if dripped on the floor.

AFTER EXAIR: Using the EXAIR Model 3925 Adjustable Dual Spot Cooler System, they were able to decrease the cooling time to under one minute. And due to the dual hose option, it gave them the ability to spread the cold air around the tubes so they did not have to remove them from the fixture while cooling, meaning the tube holds its shape to a greater accuracy.

SUMMARY:  By reducing the cooling time from 6 minutes per bend to approx. 1 minute per, with at least 300 bends per part, we can reduce the production time for each piece of equipment by 25 hours. Producing 20 pieces of equipment per year frees up the equivalent of 20.83 working days.  With an hourly rate average of $26.40, the EXAIR Model 3925 Adjustable Dual Spot Cooler System saves them $660.00 USD per machine in work hours alone! Over the course of one year, that’s a savings of $13,200.00 USD for just work hours. Meaning the ROI is right around the use of the Adjustable Spot Cooler to build one machine.

EXAIR appreciates a good success story. We encourage you to share your successes in using one or more of our products in your application. EXAIR believes in case studies so much, we incentivize our customers’ participation. We will offer a discount to any company who will provide enough information to produce a case study. If you are interested in creating a case study (and saving money) on your next project, please contact one of our Application Engineers. We would be happy to explain the details of working through this process with you.


Jordan Shouse, Application Engineer
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Utilizing EXAIR Accessories

Published on by Al WooffittLeave a comment

Here at EXAIR we are very proud of our Intelligent Compressed Air Products. We can spend a lot of time talking about our favorites (mine is the Vortex Tube). We have written many blogs about the advantages – no moving parts, little to no maintenance, meeting or exceeding OSHA safety standards for noise or dead end pressure. One thing we don’t talk as much about are the accessories that go along with and complement our products.

From left to right; a few value added accessories for your Vortex Tube: Hot Muffler, Cold Muffler, Automatic Drain Filter Separator, Oil Removal Filter, and Solenoid Valve/Thermostat Kit.

Some of the most commonly used accessories are our compressed air Filters and Regulators. We would recommend the use of these with all of our products (or even with products that aren’t even ours).
The Filter Separator will remove water, dirt and rust from your compressed air system. The 5-micron filter element will keep contaminants from plugging or damaging your compressed air product.
An Oil Removal Filter (always placed downstream of our Filter Separator) will provide even finer filtration by removing oil and solid particulate using a 0.03-micron element.
Our Pressure Regulators will enable you to select the operating pressure. At EXAIR we always recommend operating at the minimum pressure required to get the job done. Pressure Regulators allow you to do that, saving on unnecessary air consumption and allowing for dialing in the performance of EXAIR products within an application.

For some of our products, we have accessories made specifically for them. For use with our Line Vacs we have Line Vac Hose. We have Thermostats and Solenoid Valves to pair with our Cabinet Coolers, and for our Vortex Tubes we would recommend our Mufflers.
For our Air Knives we have several great offerings:
If you need an easy and reliable way to mount your Air Knife, then our Universal Air Knife Mounting System is what you are looking for.
If your application requires something longer than our stock Knives, or perhaps you need to control certain sections of the air flow independently, then our Coupling Bracket Kits are the perfect fit.
If you want to make plumbing your Air Knife easy, take a look at our Air Knife Plumbing Kits. They can be used for all Air Knives longer than 24″.

If you need to plumb many of our other Intelligent Compressed Air Products, then we have a selection of compressed air hoses and fittings that will make life easier.
Our Coiled Hoses pair well with our Safety Air Guns, allowing you to move more freely while operating.
Our Compressed Air Hoses are commonly used with our Industrial Housekeeping products to give the drum and dolly the reach needed.

If you need a way to mount or position your Air Nozzles, then we have our Magnetic Bases, Stay Set Hoses, and Swivel Fittings that can be added to make a complete set-up.

Whatever your application’s need is, or the product you’re looking for, we certainly have a range of complimentary accessory products that will make installation and adjustment easier. If you have any questions about these, or any other EXAIR product, feel free to contact us.

Al Wooffitt
Application Engineer

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