Tag: EFC

Top Ten Reasons Why EXAIR’s Super Air Knife Is So Super

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

1. Efficiency – With an air entrainment ratio of 40:1 (literally means it pulls in 40 SCFM of “free” air from the surrounding environment for every 1 SCFM of consumption), compressed air consumption is dramatically lower than any other blow off device.

EXAIR Intelligent Compressed Air Products such as (left to right) the Air Wipe, Super Air Knife, Super Air Nozzle, and Air Amplifier are engineered to entrain enormous amounts of air from the surrounding environment.

2. Laminar air flow – My colleague John Ball did a bang-up job in a video blog explaining the fluid mechanics theory behind this. Operationally, laminar flow is is beneficial because it’s particularly conducive to generating a stripping or sweeping action, as opposed to the turbulent flow from an open blow off, a blower, or a fan.

3. Quiet operation – The high entrainment ratio that makes the Super Air Knife so efficient also makes for amazingly low sound levels. The outermost entrained air creates a boundary layer that attenuates the sound level of the higher velocity, hard hitting center flow.

4. Lengths available – Super Air Knives are stocked in lengths from 3″ to 9ft. Custom lengths can be made if you’re space-limited for installation, and custom shims can be installed if you want to shorten the curtain width of a stock Super Air Knife. Super Air Knives can also be coupled together for even longer lengths.

Air Knife Coupling Bracket Kits are available from stock for Aluminum, 303SS, and 316SS Super Air Knives.

5. Material of construction – No matter how aggressive the environment is, odds are, EXAIR has a Super Air Knife that’ll hold up to it. Durable aluminum models are good to 180°F (82°C). There are also two Types of Stainless Steel to choose from: 303SS for high strength, and 316SS for protection from chloride pitting corrosion & higher strength. Both 303SS & 316SS are good to 800°F (427°C). For exceptionally harsh environments, PVDF (Polyvinylidene Fluoride) constructed Super Air Knives have Hastelloy C-276 hardware & PTFE shims, which are resistant to UV light, inorganic chemicals, solvents, ozone, weather, fungi, chlorinated hydrocarbons, highly corrosive acids, weak bases, and salts. They’re good to 275°F (135°C).

6. Easy installation – Like all of our products, the Super Air Knives – from the 3″ to the 9ft models – are “user friendly” as far as mounting & installation goes. The Model 9060 Universal Air Knife Mounting System makes for quick installation and easy positioning. 24″ to 42″ Super Air Knives need to be plumbed to both ends…if you hard pipe the air supply, the Super Air Knife itself will essentially be as well supported as the piping. The same holds true for longer Super Air Knives with Plumbing Kits installed. 3″ Super Air Knives can even be fitted with Stay Set Hoses, and Magnetic Bases. And the 1/4″-20 tapped holes on the bottom of the body allow for a wide range of mounting solutions…anything you can put a bolt through, really.

The 9060 Universal Air Knife Mounting Systems are perfect for simple, fast installation and positioning.
Yes, that’s a door hinge. No, it wasn’t my idea ( but I kind of wish it was.)

7. Low maintenance – With no moving parts, they’ll run darn near indefinitely, maintenance free, as long as you supply them with clean, moisture free compressed air. Oh, and keep them clean, externally, if they’re in an area where environmental contaminants can build up on the precision finished surfaces that are essential to their air entrainment.

8. Reliability – Hand in hand with #7, no moving parts also means there’s not much that can stop them from working. They can operate continuously, if needed, or you can cycle them on & off as frequently as necessary to keep from using valuable compressed air, except when needed.

EXAIR’s award winning EFC Electronic Flow Control can be set to operate a Super Air Knife (or any of our Intelligent Compressed Air Products) in cycles as low as 0.1 seconds.

9. Static Eliminator option -The laminar, high velocity air flow is ideal for many blow off applications, but if static charge is a problem, an Ionizing Bar can be installed, turning the Super Air Knife into a Super Ion Air Knife:

10. Free stuff – OK; this last one is “super” for a limited time. Order a Super Air Knife between 11/1/22 and 12/31/2022, and get a FREE Safety Air Gun. Click here for details.

If you’d like to find out how the Super Air Knife – or any of our Intelligent Compressed Air Products can help you get the most out of your compressed air system, give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
EXAIR Corporation
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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

Big Nozzle, Big Award…Again!

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

The year was 2016, and it was quite a time for sports fans:

  • Team USA dominated at the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Swimmer Michael Phelps won five Gold Medals, and gymnast Simone Biles won a Gold Medal on her own, and another for the team event, contributing to the 46 total Gold Medals won by United States Olympians.
  • The Chicago Cubs and Cleveland Indians took the World Series to all seven games…and extra innings in Game Seven. That makes it hard to disparage either team, but the Cubs prevailed, winning the Fall Classic for the first time in 108 years.
  • World Series heartbreak notwithstanding, Cleveland sports fans were pretty happy a few months earlier when the Cavaliers cinched the NBA Championship in seven games, defeating the heavily favored Golden State Warriors…who beat the Cavs in both of their regular season games that year.

Another big winner (non-sports) that year was EXAIR Corporation’s Model EF5010SS External Mix Narrow Angle Flat Fan Pattern 1/2 NPT Atomizing Spray Nozzle…it won Plant Engineering’s Product of the Year Bronze Medal Award in the Fluid Handling category. Yes, there’s a Compressed Air category, and our products have won a TON of those too…as well as some other categories:

  • Material Handling (Line Vacs)
  • Maintenance Products (Super Air Nozzles)
  • Environmental Health (High Lift Reversible Drum Vac)
  • Automation & Controls (EFC Electronic Flow Control)
Just a few of our past Product of the Year award winners in categories other than “Compressed Air”.

Anyway, now it’s 2021, and the No-Drip version of that Atomizing Spray Nozzle – Model EF6010SS – has won Plant Engineering’s GOLD Medal Award in the Fluid Handling category. Model EF6010SS offers the same performance as the EF5010SS:

  • Liquid flow rates from 141 to 303 gallons per hour (tested with water)
  • Flat fan spray dimensions from 15″ wide (6″ from target) to 25″ wide (15″ from target)
  • Atomized spray at a distance of up to 35 feet away

And, of course, the No-Drip feature means you can instantly stop liquid flow by shutting off the compressed air supply, up to 180 cycles a minute, if needed. This is a great feature to have to cut down on the cost – and the MESS – associated with overspraying.

Our comprehensive line of Atomizing Spray Nozzles has options for most any liquid that can be sprayed, with a wide range of flow rates and pattern size/shapes. The 1/2 NPT External Mix Narrow Angle Flat Fan model is ideally suited for liquids with higher viscosities where a higher flow rate/thicker coating is needed, as opposed to a humidification or misting application, where a smaller Atomizing Spray Nozzle might be specified. Some current, successfully reported, applications include:

  • Snack food provider – applying flavoring to bulk snack materials.
  • Commercial bakery – spraying cooking oil onto pans used in a conveyor oven.
  • Sporting goods manufacturer – applying adhesive to the tops of skateboard decks to glue the grip tape on.

If you’d like to discuss a particular liquid spraying application, I’d love to help…give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
EXAIR Corporation
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How to Save Money on Compressed Air

Published on by codybiehleLeave a comment

Compressed air can be one of the more expensive utilities to use in a facility, but a compressed air system is full of simple opportunities to increase efficiency and minimize the cost. Much like how you can take multiple steps to save electricity at your house there a few simple steps you can take to save your compressed air. These steps include finding and repairing leaks, compressor maintenance, minimizing pressure at the point of use, and turning the compressed air off when not in use. Implementing these steps and using the right tools to achieve them can lead to significant dollar savings – in fact our website case studies, other blog articles and catalog are filled with example after example of air (and dollar) savings success! And let’s be honest here, who doesn’t like saving money.

First off is finding your leaks. Leaks are one of the major wastes of compressed air in a system that could happen. Leaks in a compressed air system can account for wasting 20-30% of a compressors output. These leaks can commonly be found in pipe joints, devices that use the compressed air, quick connect fittings, and storage tanks. All of this compounds to wasting air much like a leaky faucet wastes water – little by little it grows until it simply needs to be addressed. One of the ways to help find leaks in your system is EXAIR’s affordable Ultrasonic Leak Detector. This leak detector uses ultrasonic waves to detect where costly leaks can be found so that they can be patched or fixed.

EXAIR Ultrasonic Leak Detector

Choose efficient end-use products. Engineered air knives, air amplifiers, air nozzles and safety air guns can dramatically outperform (use less air) than commercial air nozzles and in-house solutions such as drilled pipes, open air lines and other creative “fixes”. We have seen some very nice in-house solutions from customers who have put in some significant time and effort, but they all have one thing in common – they use more air than any of EXAIR’s engineered solutions.

Minimizing your pressure can also save you money by limiting the amount of compressed air that is being used. Pressure and volume go hand and hand, the higher the pressure the higher the volume of air and vice versa. By minimizing the pressure that you are using you are also minimizing the amount of air that is being used which means savings. Each CFM used can be associated with a certain price value so the less you use the more you save. You also cut down on the amount of work the compressor has to do and how often the compressor has to cycle. Pressure can be minimized using one of EXAIR’s Pressure Regulators to cut down on the amount of air being used.

EXAIR’s Pressure Regulators come in 4 different sizes

Turn off the compressed air when it is not in use. Just like how you wouldn’t leave the faucet running or lights on in a room that is not being used, don’t leave your compressed air running (insert bad dad joke). Constantly using compressed air even when not in use will cause the compressor to cycle more often wasting money. Each CFM has a price to it so don’t waste CFM’s blowing it back into the air and doing nothing. This can simply be done by adding one of EXAIR’s ball valve or solenoid valves to turn off when you are done using it. Also, if you want to take it another step farther you can look at using one of EXAIR’s Electronic Flow Controllers (EFC). The EFC uses a photo eye attached to a timer that will open a solenoid valve for a set amount of time when it detects an object within 3’ of the photo eye. This will turn the air on only when your product is in the air path and turn it off during any spaces in between.

EXAIR’s EFC in use

Compressor maintenance is another important step to minimizing the cost of compressed air. Neglected air compressors can cause a lot of issues ranging from expensive repairs to a decreases in efficiency. Wear and tear placed on the motor of an air compressor can cause the compressor to produce less compressed air (SCFM) at the same power consumption. This means you are paying the same amount of money and getting less out of it. Making sure that your compressor or any machine is always running at its optimal performance and should always be a priority for any facility.

There are many different ways to save on compressed air, these are just a few of them. Reducing air use will save money and reduce the demand on your compressor which in turn can prolong the life of your air compressor. If you have questions about how to save on compressed air or any of our engineered Intelligent Compressed Air® Products, feel free to contact EXAIR or any Application Engineer.

Cody Biehle
Application Engineer
EXAIR Corporation
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