Tag: industrial air movers

So, You Want To Calculate Line Vac Flow… Or Do You?

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

As an EXAIR Application Engineer (and one with almost 14 years under my belt, to boot), I’m well versed in all the standard calculations regarding compressed air, including: converting ACFM or ICFM to SCFM, determining compressed air consumption rates at different inlet pressures, return on investment from using more efficient products, receiver tank sizing, and cost of compressed air generation. I know many formulas, by heart, that relate to certain applications involving our products, like how to calculate the heat load for Cabinet Cooler Systems, the amount of air flow from a Super Air Nozzle, Super Air Knife, Air Amplifier, etc., to cool an object from a starting to a desired temperature (and how long it’ll take to do it), and humidity formulas for Atomizing Spray Nozzle applications.

I’ve loved math all my life, so all that stuff above is one of my favorite parts of this job. There are, however, things we can’t do the math on…and calculating the flow through a Line Vac is one of them. Maybe two. I say “Maybe two” because there are two common questions we get regarding Line Vacs, and neither have answers that can be calculated:

  • How fast can I move [insert description of bulk material here] with a Line Vac?
  • How much air flow is generated by a Line Vac?

There are a LOT of variables that can affect conveyance rate, so the first question is difficult to put a number on, unless it’s something we’ve tested here before, or if a customer has provided reliable data from their Line Vac conveyor setup. For our latest Catalog, #35, we compiled this into a Conveyance Data table. You can access it here (registration required), request your very own print copy, or just contact me, and I’ll email it to you.

Likewise, the second question doesn’t have a mathematical formula to give us an answer either. When we get questions about a Line Vac’s total developed air flow, we’ll say that, very generally speaking, a Line Vac will entrain 2-3 times its compressed air consumption in vacuum flow. That’s based on some informal testing we’ve done in the shop on a few specific Line Vacs. And that’s ALWAYS followed up with some questions of our own:

  • Are you looking for a specific amount of air flow? And,
  • What is the nature of the application?

Oftentimes, we find out that the customer just needs to move air – as opposed to conveying bulk product – and THAT’S a job for our Air Amplifiers. We DO publish formal performance data on those, and if air movement is all that’s needed, the Air Amplifiers are going to do that WAY more efficiently than a Line Vac. They’re capable of entraining air at rates of up to 25:1.

Air Amplifiers use the Coanda Effect to generate high flow with low consumption.

If you have questions about a potential application, or about a specific product, give me a call. I’m here to make sure you get the most out of our products, and that starts right at the beginning, with finding the best one to suit your needs.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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Application Spotlight! – Adjustable Air Amplifier Helps in a Messy Situation.

Published on by Jordan T ShouseLeave a comment

Applications spotlights have become a great resource for our customers to “peak” behind the curtain. For this spotlight, let’s talk about Air Amplifiers and cellophane. Cellophane wrapping is a common mid-process way to protect products between steps in the manufacturing process. And even more often, to protect the final product.

When you unwrap the cellophane, it becomes pretty hard to dispose of, it can often be statically charged and not easily tossed in a garbage bin.

A recent customer came to us as they were removing thousands of products from their individual cellophane to bulk pack them for a big box store. This created a huge mess with mountains of trash as tall as the trash can and all over the floor.

Our suggestion was to use an Air Amplifier to carry the trash cellophane away from the unwrapping station to a trash bin with a filtered lid to trap the cellophane. We chose model 6043, 3″ Adjustable Air Amplifier. We chose this method as the Air Amplifier is designed to entrain a very large amount of air at its suction side, allowing the operator to simply get the cellophane near the suction point, and it would be pulled in with the surrounding air.

Mock up of how the station would look. The 6043 has a 3″ ID hose on the outlet that moves the blue cellophane 15 feet to a trash location. The operator in green would just have to get the plastic close and the Air Amplifier does the rest.

In addition to this application and ventilation/exhaust applications, Air Amplifiers can be used – just like our engineered Air Knives and Air Nozzles – as a useful solution for blow off, drying, cleaning, and cooling applications. If you’ve got questions about them (or any EXAIR Intelligent Compressed Air Products), give me a call.

Jordan Shouse
Application Engineer

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Cellophane wrapped Pastries courtesy of Anthony Easton via creative commons

Benefits of Entrainment in EXAIR’s Products

Published on by Al WooffittLeave a comment

One word I don’t think I ever used before I started working at EXAIR is entrainment. It was not a concept that I had ever needed to think about or discuss. But now, having worked here for a short while, it is a topic that I discuss regularly – daily even. Many of EXAIR’s quiet and efficient compressed air products are designed to maximize air entrainment.

Entrainment is defined in the simplest of terms as: to draw in and transport (something, such as solid particles or gas) by the flow of a fluid. In the context of EXAIR’s compressed air products, the surrounding ambient air is entrained by the primary air flow created by the compressed air.

For example, when compressed air exits the precise slotted nozzle of our Super Air Knife, a low pressure area is induced, which speeds up and draws in ambient air. This air entrainment (at a ratio of 40:1) is what makes our Super Air Knives so efficient. This same effect is true for our Super Air Amplifiers, Super Air Nozzles, Super Air Wipes, as well as many other products.

This effect was first described by Daniel Bernoulli in his book Hydrodynamica, where he first explained what we know as Bernoulli’s Principle. His principle states that an increase in the speed of a fluid occurs simultaneously with a decrease in pressure. This is derived from the conservation of energy, where an increase in kinetic energy (speed) requires a corresponding reduction in potential energy (pressure).

Daniel Bernoulli was an interesting man, who we have written several blogs about, like this one here. But in summary, the work he did in the 1700s is fundamental to our products. If you would like to discuss your application, and how the Bernoulli Principle may be beneficial, feel free to give us a call!

Al Wooffitt

Application Engineer

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6 Steps to get the most out of your Compressed Air System: Engineered Products

Published on by Jordan T ShouseLeave a comment

If you’re reading the EXAIR Blog, you’re probably well aware that compressed air is the most expensive utility in an industrial environment. The average cost to generate 1000 Standard Cubic Feet of compressed air is $0.25. If you’re familiar with how much air you use on a daily basis, you’ll understand just how quickly that adds up.

To make matters worse, many compressed air systems waste significant amounts of compressed air just through leaks. According to the Compressed Air Challenge, a typical plant that has not been well maintained will likely have a leak rate of approximately 20%!! Good luck explaining to your finance department that you’re carelessly wasting 20% of the most expensive utility.

The six steps to optimizing your compressed air system is something we cover a fair amount on this blog. And there is a real reason for that. Yes, we sell compressed air products. But we are also aware compressed air costs money to generate, so using this source responsibly is very important.

This is where the 6 steps come into play, but today we are just covering Step 3. Which is upgrading your blow off, cooling and drying operations using engineered compressed air products. (If you want to read about the other 5 steps, check them out here, Step #1, Step #2, Step #4, Step #5, Step #6)

I compare step three to replacing your house windows. We recently got some prices to replace our windows, but along with that comes the cost savings we expect to get as they are better designed now than in the 1990ies to retain your temperature inside. Thus reducing the cost to cool and heat your home.

Similar to my “upgrade” to new windows, upgrading blow offs, cooling and drying operations using engineered compressed air products is Step 3 in EXAIR’s Six Steps To Optimizing Your Compressed Air System. We’ve assigned an order to these steps in accordance with basic good engineering practice & protocol, but it’s not necessary to follow them in any particular order. In fact, all six steps really don’t apply to every single compressed air system.

Step 3 does apply to most systems, though. I spent a fair amount of time in all sorts of industrial facilities in my previous roles, and almost all the time, regardless of the industry or the size of the facility, the maintenance and production part of the facility used air guns. However, I don’t recall ever seeing an engineered nozzle on one before I came to EXAIR. Since then, I’ve worked with a bunch of users to dramatically reduce compressed air consumption by replacing their cheap and inefficient air guns with EXAIR Safety Air Guns, or by retrofitting EXAIR Super Air Nozzles onto their existing air guns. We actually carry adapters to fit our Super Air Nozzles to a number of readily commercially available air guns for that very purpose.

In addition to air guns & nozzles, our Air Knives have a long history of replacing drilled pipes & pipe manifolds with inefficient nozzles used to make a curtain of air flow. The following chart details the savings you can get from the use of a 24″ Super Air Knife instead of similar devices for a 24″ wide air curtain:

Even though an electric powered blower will use less electricity than the amount of electricity an air compressor uses to supply an engineered product like the Super Air Knife, the maintenance costs make the total cost of ownership eclipse that of the engineered Air Knife.

Our Case Study Library documents many real-world situations where customers worked with us to gather & publish “before/after” documentation, proving the benefits of Step 3. I encourage you to check those out, and if you think you might have an opportunity to do a Case Study with us, we offer discounts or credit for that…give me a call.

Jordan Shouse
Application Engineer

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