Tag: farming

From Field to Market: How EXAIR Helps Streamline Vegetable Processing

Published on by John BallLeave a comment

Homonyms are words that are pronounced and spelled the same but have different meanings.  In this blog, I will cover the word lettuce.  One meaning is the leafy vegetable and the other is money.  And I like to save both.  I have an agriculture application that I would like to share where EXAIR was able to supply different products to help save lettuce. 

PowerStream Liquid Nozzle

When vegetables come from the field, they need to be cleaned and packaged for delivery to grocery stores.  The first thing that they need to do is to wash the leaves to remove dirt, compost, and bugs.  They had drilled pipes to spray water onto the leaves, using a lot of water. They were looking to do it more economically. The vegetable packing house purchased the EXAIR PowerStream Liquid Nozzles, model DL8075SS, to do the washing.  These stainless steel nozzles were mounted on a manifold to spray water onto the lettuce leaves.  With the PowerStream nozzles, we can break the water into smaller droplet sizes to increase coverage and reduce water requirements.  Thus, saving money.

The next step would be to dry the lettuce.  They were using a blower-powered air knife, but they could not remove all the insects as it was not powerful enough.  Also, by blowing hotter air which was created by the blower, lettuce would start to brown much quicker.  To improve, they purchased a model 110036SS Stainless Steel Super Air Knife.  The Super Air Knife is an efficient, powerful way to blow compressed air.  With a 40:1 amplification ratio, it will draw in 40-parts of ambient air to 1-part compressed air.  From our Super Air Knife, we blow ambient temperature air, add mass to give a much higher force to remove the water and the insects, and save on compressed air consumption. 

To reduce spoilage, you must have the proper equipment.  For this company, they were able to improve their process to increase production.  And by utilizing less water and less compressed air, they were able to increase profit.  If you would like to improve your processes in packing houses, EXAIR has a variety of products that can help you.  You can contact an Application Engineer to discuss.  For the company above, more lettuce out the door meant more lettuce in their pockets. 

John Ball
Application Engineer
Email: johnball@exair.com
Twitter: @EXAIR_jb

Photo of Vegetables by akadarcee.  Pixabay content license.

Compressed Air Use In The Agriculture Industry

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

I didn’t grow up ON a farm, but more than a few of the kids I went to school with did. My wife’s grandpa had a farm, and one of her uncles still does. Farmers have always been the most diversely talented people I’ve ever known. They’re well versed in soil chemistry and plant biology. They have a keen understanding of climate & weather patterns which allows them to sow seed after the last frost in early spring, and gather their last harvest before the first frost of mid-to-late autumn. Most of them are also expert mechanics, welders, and plumbers as well, to avoid costly repair bills on equipment they operate in fairly harsh conditions. And the ones that raised livestock, I’d stack their veterinary knowledge & skills up against just about any vet’s office.

In my twelve years with EXAIR, I’ve had the pleasure of talking with many farmers & other folks in agricultural-type jobs, and a lot of the stuff they use our products for is downright fascinating. Here are two prime examples – one from an agricultural product provider, and one from an actual agricultural job:

*A company that makes irrigation drain pipe uses Model 2485 5″ Standard Air Wipe Kits to cool and dry their extruded 4″ pipe before cutting to length & packaging it for shipment. This replaced a blower operated setup that didn’t completely dry the corrugated outside diameter. The Air Wipe not only blew off almost all the water, all the time, but also allowed them to increase production speed by nearly 10%.

The turbulent air flow from the blower system (left) really just beats on the extruded surface, while the laminar flow of the EXAIR Super Air Wipe (right) strips & sweeps the surface clean & dry.

*Once fruit & vegetables are harvested, most of them go through some sort of cleaning process. EXAIR Super Air Knives are commonly used in conjunction with those processes. Sometimes they’re blowing loose dirt from, say, onions or potatoes, so they don’t turn the wash water into a mud bath. They’re also used to blow the wash & rinse water off, so they’re as dry as possible before packaging or processing. One particular customer uses Super Air Knives for the latter. By replacing blowers with a Model 110236SS 36″ Stainless Steel Super Air Knife Kit to dry freshly washed potatoes, they were able to increase the speed of conveyance…the laminar flow from the engineered Air Knife was better at blowing off the potatoes than the turbulent flow from the blower. Also, since the temperature of the Air Knife’s flow is the same as ambient temperature (because they entrain air from their surrounding at a rate of 40:1 to their compressed air consumption), this extended the time before spoilage. The warmer air from the blower (caused by friction in the rotating elements) was fostering the bacterial growth that leads to spoilage.

Increased potato production + longer shelf life = win/win.

Engineered compressed air products are widely used in agriculture (and, of course, many other industries) for their simplicity, durability, and reliability. If you’d like to find out how EXAIR products can make your life (or at least your job) easier, give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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Compressed Air in Farming and Agriculture

Published on by exaircorpLeave a comment

I used to help my father-in-law around his farm and this city boy had his eyes opened when he realized it was more than shovels, tractors and livestock. Agriculture is vital for human existence and has become far more advanced over the centuries with a continual thirst for efficiency and technology. Agriculture is just like many other industries looking for continued ways to increase yield, improve quality, maximize labor and improve technology.

EXAIR has many products used in the agriculture and food processing industries. The following details a few example by product line how we can influence efficiencies and quality of products:

Super Air Knife drying fruits and vegetables

Super Air Knives:

EXAIRs Super Air Knives are have ben used to help harvest apples and peaches. In this case they use our Super Air Knives to dry and blow off the fruit after the rinsing process just before the waxing process then again after waxing to blow off any remaining debris or moisture from the fruit before being packed.

A processing company using the Super Air Knife to clean a conveying belt equipped with a weighing system. Before the installation of the the Super Air Knife some of the cut vegetables being weighed would stick to the belt. Their solution was to clean the conveyor belt with EXAIR’s Super Air Knife to ensure continuous operation of the weighing and packaging systems.

Super Air Nozzles:

An onion farmer used EXAIR’s Model 1100 Super Air Nozzle to blow loose onion skins from the onions before packaging to improve the aesthetics to the customers.

Line Vacs:

A food packaging company repackages banana peppers from 55 gallon drums to 1 and 5 gallon containers using our Model 6066 3″ Stainless Steel Line Vac.

Using EXAIRs Model 150200 2″ Heavy Duty Line Vacs a feed stock manufacturer conveys various grains and feed stock simultaneously to a mixer which blends the ingredients. This reduced their blend time by 50%.

A grain processor used Model 142200 aluminum threaded Line Vac to convey small amounts of corn meal into a hopper which feeds into their inspection process.

A company producing worm eggs encapsulated in water soluble wax sold to farmers to enhance soil conditions. They eliminated a hand operation using Model 6081 1″ Aluminum Line Vac  to convey the worm eggs from one classifier to another.

EXAIR has several applications using Atomizing Spray nozzles to add moisture in growing environments . Greenhouses use our Atomizing spray nozzles to control humidity in the air and keep their soils moist to maintain optimal growing environments.

There are many other applications using compressed AIR on farms such as filling tires, cleaning equipment, blowing out water lines and more. Technology drives labor savings and improved quality prototypes are being designed and tested to use compressed air using drones to shoot pods filled with seeds, fertilizer and other nutrients into the soil. EXAIR will remain a strong influence in the growth of compressed air products helping to reduce the carbon footprint, enhance efficiencies and improve cost and quality within the agriculture and food processing industries.

If you have an application and you would like to talk please contact me or any of our qualified Application Engineers at 800.903.9247 and we will gladly help with our best recommendations.

Eric Kuhnash
Application Engineer
E-mail: EricKuhnash@exair.com
Twitter: Twitter: @EXAIR_EK