Tag: hazardous location air conditioner

Record Temperatures, Severe T-Storms, Tornadoes and Pool Opening – Must Be Cabinet Cooler Season!

Published on by Tyler DanielLeave a comment

Here in Cincinnati we’ve had quite an active start to the spring season. We’re not unaccustomed to severe weather, storms, and tornadoes, but this season has seen far more severe weather activity than I can recall in any prior year. As of the writing of this blog, the state of Ohio leads all states in the US with a total of 38 tornadoes. Temperatures this week reached an all-time high at 85°F for this time of year. With weather forecasters calling for this activity to ramp up over the next few months, it’s going to be an interesting summer.

My 20k gallon cold plunge pool, for now at least!

Speaking of summer and warmer temperatures, the pool has been opened with a fresh new liner for the 2024 season. After years of patching holes to address leaks and the nonstop battle trying to keep the corners inside the track, enough was enough. We elected to have it replaced going into this season and couldn’t be happier with the end result. The original plan was to close it back up after the installation. This seemed like a good idea to avoid the inevitable deluge of helicopters ready to wreak havoc any day now. Any of you out there with maple trees and a pool can attest, it’s just not worth it! But once it’s open, it sure looks enticing. If the weather is going to be nice enough to sneak in a swim before May 1st, that’s a win! I’ll begrudgingly clean those helicopters out over the next few weeks in the hopes the warm weather continues. But with temperatures this weekend dipping down into the 30s overnight, it looks like the pool will function solely as an early morning cold plunge for the foreseeable future.

As the temperatures increase outside, it’ll also increase the ambient temperatures in facilities that aren’t climate-controlled. This heat can be detrimental to a variety of sensitive electronics inside your plant’s control panels. Fans can be installed to bring in fresh air, but along with that fresh air they’ll also bring in dust, dirt, contaminants and potentially moisture.

EXAIR’s Cabinet Cooler Systems were designed specifically to rectify these issues within your facility. Utilizing Vortex Tube technology, the Cabinet Cooler produces cold air from an ordinary supply of compressed air. This cold air keeps the enclosure free of debris and moisture and is easily installed in minutes through a standard electrical knockout. Here is a short video that shows just how simple it really is. The Cabinet Cooler Systems are available with Nema 12 (IP54) ratings and are also available in Aluminum, 303 Stainless Steel, and 316 Stainless Steel construction for Nema 4/4X (IP66) rated enclosures. For systems that are not able to be mounted on top of the cabinet, we also have Side Mount Kits available in Aluminum, 303 Stainless, and 316 Stainless. This year, EXAIR also introduced a new line of Hazardous Location Cabinet Coolers for use in classified areas.

These systems are available with cooling capacities of anywhere from 275-5,600 Btu/hr. To make things much easier for you, we offer a Cabinet Cooler Sizing Guide that will allow us to recommend the most suitable model for your cabinet. With a few quick measurements, we’ll be able to determine the exact heat load that we’ll need to dissipate and offer you a quick and easy solution. If you experienced heat related issues on electrical panels last year, contact an Application Engineer today, and we’ll see to it that this summer your cabinets remain cool!

Tyler Daniel, CCASS

Application Engineer

E-mail: TylerDaniel@EXAIR.com

X: @EXAIR_TD

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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EXAIR’s Cabinet Cooler Systems Provide MANY YEARS of Enclosure Cooling w/ No Maintenance!

Published on by Tyler Daniel1 Comment

There isn’t much in this world that you can buy these days that you can reliably expect the same continued performance for years on end without any intervention. As they say, “They don’t make ‘em like they used to anymore”. That is, except for EXAIR’s Cabinet Coolers.

We’re oftentimes contacted by customers that have been using an EXAIR Cabinet Cooler for years (sometimes the cooler even pre-dates the tenure of the customer we’re dealing with!) and are wondering if they need any spare parts or maintenance. If they’ve properly treated their compressed air at the point-of-use and supplied the Cabinet Cooler with particulate-free, oil-free compressed air, the answer is NO!

Such was a recent case for a client in the Middle East that was looking to expand their production and needed some more coolers for the new panels controlling their equipment. He’d been working in the facility for about 7 years and wanted a “rebuild kit” for the Cabinet Cooler they currently had, as well as a quotation for some new systems. The cooler was still operating well, but it was clear it had been installed in a rather dirty environment. Despite being caked with contaminants from the environment, the cooler was operating just fine. The image below shows our Model HT4640SS-316 Cabinet Cooler that had been working well before his time working as their maintenance manager.

When supplied with clean and dry compressed air, the Cabinet Coolers operate completely maintenance-free. With no moving parts to wear out and no refrigerants contained inside the coolers themselves, they’ll continue to operate for many years without the need for any maintenance. The same cannot be said about refrigerant-based A/C systems that are often used as an alternative.

The Cabinet Cooler was designed specifically for operating in the harshest of conditions where A/C systems will be problematic. Thermostatically controlled systems are available to ensure that you’ll maintain the desired internal temperature of the panel without using any unnecessary compressed air. High Temperature Cabinet Coolers are also available for applications where ambient conditions could be higher than 125 °F. Refrigerant-based panel coolers must be de-rated by 65% at 90 °F and by 95% at 115 °F, meaning they’ll need to either be oversized or operate longer to match the performance from a similarly sized Cabinet Cooler System.

Do yourself a favor and check out EXAIR’s NEW Cabinet Cooler Calculator to see what system we’d recommend for your given conditions. It’s ready to ship out to you today. Give us a call to get one on order before you experience heat-related shutdowns, NOT after!

Tyler Daniel, CCASS

Application Engineer

E-mail: TylerDaniel@EXAIR.com

Twitter: @EXAIR_TD

Hot Off The Press (Release): EXAIR Catalog #35

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

If you’re a registered user on our website, you likely got word of this already through our August 15, 2023 Press Release. If not – or even if you did and want some more details – read on, and I’ll tell you all about it.

Like all of our previous catalogs, Catalog #35 provides specification, dimensional, and performance data on all of our stock products. Many of them include detailed descriptions of “textbook” applications for those products. You’ll also find:

  • Efficiency Lab (page 6): If you want a full performance report on a compressed air device you’re using right now, this is a free service we offer. Contact an Application Engineer and arrange to have it sent in. We’ll test it for compressed air consumption, force applied, and sound level, and send you a report on it. It’ll include, of course, the EXAIR engineered product(s) that we’ll recommend, along with performance data on them, as a comparison.
  • Our Six Steps (page 7): The first page of our Optimization section details the Six Steps To Optimizing Your Compressed Air System. It’s not necessary to follow them in order, and not all of them are applicable to every single compressed air system. But if you’re serious about reducing your compressed air costs, this is a comprehensive plan on how to do it for sure.
  • OSHA Maximum Allowable Noise Exposure table & typical Air Consumption values of common “homemade” blow offs (page 53): We put this here so you can turn the next few pages and see what a difference engineered products like EXAIR Super Air Nozzles can make.
  • Droplet Size data (page 98): Use this to determine the suitability of our Atomizing Spray Nozzles for liquid spraying applications.
  • Vortex Tube Specification and Performance tables (pages 201-202): If you know how much cold air flow you need, and at what temperature you need it, you can use these tables to determine which EXAIR Vortex Tube (or other Spot Cooling Product) to use.
  • Cabinet Cooler System Sizing Guide (page 220): Just fill in the blanks & send this in, and we’ll quickly & accurately calculate the heat load of your electrical/electronic enclosure, and specify the right Cabinet Cooler System for you.

Now, if you’ve ever had any of our previous catalogs, you might have noticed that those were already in there, and that’s all pretty great. What’s REALLY great about Catalog #35, though, is some of the new features:

  • Line Vac Conveyance Data (pages 176-177): While there’s WAY too many variables in bulk conveyance applications to accurately calculate conveyance rates. We’ve done some controlled, in-house testing with several different materials, several different Line Vacs, at several different lengths & heights, though, and we’re proud to publish that in the new catalog. This shouldn’t be considered a guarantee of performance, but if you’re wondering how much of a particular bulk material you can convey, this table will certainly get you in the right ballpark.
  • Best Practice for Using EXAIR Intelligent Compressed Air Products (pages 239-240): This information has always been in the Air Data files on our website, along with an ABUNDANCE of data that’ll help you get the most out of your compressed air system. Now, it’s at your fingers.

Of course, I’d be remiss if I wrote a whole blog on the new catalog without mentioning the new products:

  • Model 9207 Ultrasonic Leak Detector (pages 18-19): This serves the same function as the now-obsolete Model 9061, but with some handy upgrades like a LED display, a sleek new body, and high quality ear buds.
Use the Model 9207 Ultrasonic Leak Detector’s parabola to find the vicinity of the leak, and the tubular extension to identify its exact location.
  • 1/2 NPT HollowStream Cone Atomizing Nozzles (page 105): With five new distinct models at the high-flow end of our already comprehensive line of Liquid Atomizing Spray Nozzles, these provide up to 53 gallons per minute of liquid flow, and are capable of passing particulate up to 0.344″ in diameter.
The Hollow Cone spray pattern is ideal for cooling, cleaning, foam breaking, rinsing, and dust suppression. It also uses considerably less liquid than the OmniStream models, when higher flow rate isn’t necessary.
EXAIR’s ATEX Cabinet Cooler Systems provide heat protection for electrical enclosures in potentially explosive atmospheres, like those found on offshore drilling platforms, petrochemical plants, mines, flour mills, etc.

Like our previous catalogs, Catalog 35 is now available for download (in product line sections due to file size) from the PDF Library at EXAIR.com. You can also request a copy to be mailed to you, or you can contact an Application Engineer to have individual product line sections (again, because of file size) email to you right away.

As always, if you’d like to talk about how to get the most out of your compressed air system, our team of Application Engineers are here Monday to Friday, 7am to 4pm Eastern, to help with that. Give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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