Tag: curve

Pressure Sensing Flow Meters

Published on by Jordan T ShouseLeave a comment

If you are looking to add some control to your compressed air system, one of the first things you need to do is understand the baseline for where your system is. This includes, of course, the volume of compressed air you are providing, but also the pressure at which your system is seeing as well. This is especially important when you have an application that is very pressure dependent like a CNC mill tool changer.

The Pressure Sensing Digital Flowmeters are available from 2″ Sched. 40 Iron Pipe up to 8″ Sched. 40 Iron Pipe.  As well as 2″ to 4″ copper pipes.  These will be read out and with additional data logger as well, so you can track the pressure over the course of every shift, and even days.

Generating a pressure and consumption profile of a system can help to pinpoint energy wasters such as timer-based drains that are dumping every hour versus level-based drains that only open when needed. A scenario similar to this was the cause of an entire production line being shut down nearly every day of the week for a local facility until they installed flowmeters and were able to narrow the demand location down to a filter baghouse with a faulty control for the cleaning cycle.

If you’re serious about getting the most out of your compressed air use, the very first step in EXAIR’s Six Steps To Optimizing Your Compressed Air System is literally a great place to start.

Six Steps to Optimizing Your Compressed Air System

Here are some blogs on the other steps!

Step #1- Step 1 – Measure your Air

Step #2- Step 2 – Finding and fixing leaks

Step #3- Step 3 – Use Efficient and Quiet Engineered Products

Step #4- Step 4 – Turn the air off while its not in use

Step #5- Step 5 – Install Secondary Receiver Tanks

Step #6 – Step 6 – Control the air pressure

If you would like to discuss the best digital flowmeter for your system and to better understand the benefits of pressure sensing, please contact us. To find out more, give me a call.

Jordan Shouse
Application Engineer

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

Tool Changer Photo courtesy of Luke Gilliam via creative commons

Pressure Monitoring Not Just For Air Systems

Published on by Brian FarnoLeave a comment

This past weekend we celebrated Labor Day. My family and I had the pleasure of going to a friend’s property and parking an RV to “glamp” for the weekend. The trip is only about 3-1/2 hours from our homes and when traveling in the RV it is a slow and steady wins the race kind of trip. One of the first things I do when we are prepping for the trip is to check tire pressure. Then, the last thing I do before we leave is check tire pressures.

While at their property we did the same on all of their vehicles, two side-by-side UTVs, and their boat trailer. When looking at each of these, almost all of them were low. Now, these items all sit more than they are used and only see movement maybe once a month. The weather here in the area, including Kentucky has been getting cooler in the evenings which causes the air in tires to start to take up less space and so the pressure drops. Well, after checking and filling, we went out and everything was great, until it wasn’t. When we loaded up the boat we noticed one of the tires was nearly on the rim of the trailer. With no tools on hand and a short drive, we elected to make the drive and inspect when we got back to home ground rather than in a public parking lot where someone had already offered to help if need be. Once we arrived, we inspected the tire and found no obvious signs for it to be so low on pressure. We filled it up again and let it sit for the night. After breakfast the next day we found the tire was still holding air so we assumed that when we checked the pressure initially it was at a good pressure and by doing so something must have stuck in the valve causing it to have a slow leak. Once that was seated and good, the tire held air, and we were good to roll for another day.

This made me realize how important pressure monitoring is on tires for certain vehicles and led me to install a continuous pressure monitoring system on the RV that we took. Being able to monitor tire temperature and pressure is critical and catching low pressure before it causes other issues can help reduce damage or catastrophic failure significantly. This also all made me connect my thoughts to the EXAIR Digital Flowmeters which are available with pressure sensing capabilities. These can easily be installed into a system and then be used to monitor your industrial system and potentially see issues before catastrophic failures or downtimes due to a loss of compressed air.

If you want to discuss what a Pressure Sensing Digital Flowmeter can do in your facility or even if you want to troubleshoot why you are seeing a drop in performance and how to even go about troubleshooting your entire air system, don’t hesitate to contact an Application Engineer.

Brian Farno
Application Engineer
BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF

Intermediate Storage Tanks & How To Size Them

Published on by Brian FarnoLeave a comment

When evaluating processes that utilize compressed air and adhering to the Six Steps to Compressed Air Optimization, intermediate storage proves to be a critical role coming in at step number five. Intermediate storage tanks may already be in place within your facility and often times can be implemented as modifications to aid existing lines that are struggling to maintain proper availability of compressed air to keep the line at peak performance.

EXAIR Receiver Tank in 60 Gallon Capacity

When determining whether or not a production line or point of use compressed air operation would benefit from a receiver tank/intermediate storage we would want to evaluate whether the demand for compressed air is intermittent.  Think of a receiver tank as a capacitor in an electrical circuit or a surge tank in a water piping system.  These both store up energy or water respectively to deliver to during a short high demand period then slowly charge back up from the main system and prepare for the next high demand.   If you look from the supply point it will see a very flattened demand curve, if you look from the application side it still shows a wave of peak use to no use.

Intermittent Applications are prime for rapid on/off of compressed air.

One of the key factors in intermediate storage of compressed air is to appropriately size the tank for the supply side of the system as well as the demand of the application.  The good news is there are equations for this.  To determine the capacity, use the equation shown below which is slightly different from sizing your main compressed air storage tank.  The formulate shown below is an example.

Where:

V – Volume of receiver tank (ft3 / cubic feet)

T – Time interval (minutes)

C – Air demand for system (cubic feet per minute)

Cap – Supply value of inlet pipe (cubic feet per minute)

Pa – Absolute atmospheric pressure (PSIA)

P1 – Header Pressure (PSIG)

P2 – Regulated Pressure (PSIG)

One of the main factors when sizing point of use intermediate storage is, they are being supplied air by smaller branch lines which cannot carry large capacities of air.  That limits your Cap value. The only way to decrease the V solution is to increase your Cap. The other key point is to ensure that all restrictions feeding into the tank and from the tank to your point of use are minimized in order to maintain peak performance.

If there are intermittent applications that are struggling to keep up with the production demands within your system, please reach out and speak with an Application Engineer.  We are always here to help and we may even be able to help you lower the demand needed by utilizing an engineered point of use compressed air solution.

Brian Farno
Application Engineer
BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF