Tag: flow control

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

Save Compressed Air with the EXAIR Electronic Flow Control

Published on by Jordan T ShouseLeave a comment

The best way to save compressed air is to simply turn it off when it’s not being used. This might seem pretty simple, but there may be processes in your facility where this couldn’t be achieved by just turning a valve. In applications where product is traveling along a conveyor, and must be dried, cooled, or blown off, there is likely some spacing in between the parts. It isn’t necessary to keep the blowoff running constantly if there’s periods of intermittent spacing. To help reduce the overall load on the air compressor, implementing a solution to shut the air off in between each part can have a dramatic impact. EXAIR’s Electronic Flow Control, or EFC, is designed to improve efficiency by reducing overall compressed air usage. It utilizes a photoelectric sensor that detects when the part is present. When it’s not, it triggers a solenoid valve to close and shut off the compressed air supply.

efcapp
EXAIR EFC

One way to use the Electronic Flow Control would be for Turning a Atomizing Spray nozzle on to coat your product.  For example see the photo below where you could use the EFC to sense the pants coming down the line. Then turn the air supply on to spray a bleach solution to get the weathered look you are after. Once the pants pass the EFC will turn the nozzle off, replacing a manual operation awhile saving compressed air and your liquid solution!

Another use would be to tell when a hopper that is being filled by a Line Vac is empty or over filled.  You can adjust the sensor and the control module to sense that the hopper is empty and it will turn the compressed air on to the Line Vac to then feed the hopper.  Then set the timer module so it will run for the length of time it takes to fill the hopper.  The other way would be to place the sensor at the top of the hopper and have it sense when the pile of media has reached the full level.

The EFC models available from stock can accommodate flows up to 350 SCFM. For applications requiring more compressed air, EFCs with dual solenoids are also available. If you have an application in one or more of your processes where intermittent compressed air use could help save you money, give us a call. We’d be happy to take a look at the application and help determine just how quickly the EFC could start paying YOU

Jordan Shouse
Application Engineer

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Twitter: @EXAIR_JS

Candy Producer Saves $4600 in Compressed Air with EXAIR’s EFC

Published on by Jordan T ShouseLeave a comment

A few months ago, I took a phone call from a manufacturing engineer who worked at a large candy production facility here in the United States. Extra chocolate was dripping out of the candy molds onto the conveyor belt below.  Within a few hours the belt was dirty enough they would have to stop the line and clean the residual chocolate off the belt. 

The best solution I found was a 72” 316 Stainless Steel Super Air Knife. It worked great when powered at 60 psig inlet pressure. The laminar flow of the Super Air Knife was perfectly suited for this application.  The knife was mounted between the mold and the belt to help solidify and blowoff the excess drips of chocolate. There was one drawback, the Super Air Knife was not needed to blow the belt continuously and the continuous demand was not desirable during peak production.

The simple solution for this was the EXAIR Electronic Flow Control, the EFC minimizes compressed air use by turning off the air when a sensor is triggered. Since there was a 4.5-minute time gap between each mold set this was a great solution. When the photoelectric eye saw a mold, it then told the solenoid valve to open and supply the knife with compressed air for 30 seconds while the mold was open and the excess chocolate would be dripping. See the Savings calculations below;

efcapp

Without using the EFC

(* Using $ 0.25 per 1000 SCFM used)

  • 72” Super Ion Air Knife = 165.6 SCFM @ 60 PSIG
  • 165.6 SCFM x 60 minutes x $ 0.25 / 1000 SCFM = $ 2.48 per hour
  • $ 2.48 per hour x 8 hours = $ 19.84 per 8-hour day
  • $ 19.84 x 5 days = $ 99.20 per work week
  • $ 99.20 per week x 52 weeks =$5,158.40 per work year without the EFC control

 

With the EFC installed (turning the compressed air off for 4 minutes 30 seconds with a 30 second on time = 6 minutes/hour compressed air usage)

  • 165.6 SCFM x 6 minute x $ 0.25 / 1000 SCFM = $ 0.25 per hour
  • $ 0.25 per hour x 8 hours = $ 2.00 per 8-hour day
  • $ 2.00 x 5 days = $ 10.00 per work week
  • $ 10.00 per week x 52 weeks = $520.00 per work year with the EFC control 

$ 5,158.40 per year (w/o EFC) – $ 520.00 per year (w/ EFC) = $4,638.40 projected savings per year by incorporating the EFC.

EFC287x250

This example illustrates, clearly, why choosing the EFC is a good idea. It has the ability to keep compressed air costs to a minimum and saves compressed air for use within other processes around the plant. With this type of compressed air savings, the unit would pay for itself in less than 3 months.

If you would like to see how we might be able to improve your process or provide a solution for valuable savings, please contact one of our Application Engineers.

Jordan Shouse
Application Engineer
Send me an email
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Twitter: @EXAIR_JS

 

EXAIR Leads the Way with Standards and Certifications

Published on by exaircorpLeave a comment

For over 34 years, EXAIR has been the industry leader in providing Intelligent Compressed Air Products to the industrial marketplace. While much of our focus is to ensure our products are engineered to provide optimal performance, we are also dedicated to manufacturing products that meet a wide range of standards and directives to promote safety in relation to plant personnel.

 

For instance, all of our compressed air operated products meet or exceed OSHA Standards 29 CFR 1910.242(b), requiring that the outlet pressure of an open pipe, nozzle, air gun, etc., when used for cleaning purposes, must remain below 30 PSI when dead-ended against the skin, as well as Standard 29 CFR 1910.95(a) as a way to protect workers from job related injuries related to dangerous sound levels of 90 dBA and higher.

 

 


Many of our products are also CE Compliant, meeting the mandatory requirements for products intended to be sold in the European Economic Area or “EEA”. For example our Electronic Flow Control and Electronic Temperature Control (ETC) meet the EU (European Union) Low Voltage Directive 2006/95/EC.

 

 

EXAIR electrically powered devices, like our Static Eliminators and Digital Flowmeters for example, comply with the “Restriction of Hazardous Substances” or RoHS Directive 2011/65/EU, including the amendment outlined in the European Commission decision L 214/65.

 

 

We are also committed to providing material that supports the conflict mineral free rule to help aid in the relief of illegal trade of exotic materials, like tungsten, gold, tin and tantalum in the DRC region. Using the CMRT 4.20 template, we document our supply resources to ensure we provide conflict free products, as outlined in Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

 

Lastly, the European Union introduced the REACH program – Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals, as a method to register chemical substances being imported into the EU to protect people and the environment, per Regulation (EC) No 1907/2006 Title I, Article 3.  Also noted in the program, Title II, Article 7, they state that any product with a substance intended to be released under normal operating conditions, must be registered for quantities totaling more than 1 metric ton per year. Since EXAIR products do not intentionally release or contain any such substances, registration to meet the program is not required.

 

If you have any questions about any of these Standards or Directives or about which EXAIR products comply, please feel free to contact an application engineer for assistance. We’d be happy to help!

Justin Nicholl
Application Engineer
justinnicholl@exair.com
@EXAIR_JN