Tag: intake

Air Quality Classes: ISO 8573-1

Published on by John BallLeave a comment

Airborne particles surround us everywhere.   In a general work environment, nearly four million particles per cubic foot are floating around us at any given time.  When an air compressor brings in this air, the concentration increases substantially.  So, compressed air is not only expensive to make, but very dirty.  As the air exits your air compressor and travels into your pneumatic system, there is so much contamination, that the International Standard Organization, ISO, created an Air Quality chart with Purity Classes.

This chart is easy to follow and can be found on the International Organization for Standardization; ISO 8573-1 for Air Quality.  It is used to select a cleanliness level for your compressed air system. Contamination is categorized into three areas; Particles, Water, and Oil (reference above).  Each class is associated with a number for each category ranging from 0 (most stringent) to 9 (most relaxed).  As an example, the Air Quality value of ISO 8573-1:2010 [1.2.4] has Class 1 for Particles, Class 2 for Water, and Class 4 for Oil.  These class values will show the maximum value in each category.

To define the categories in more detail, I will separate the three to discuss the origins and solutions.

Per the descriptions above, here are the criteria by which compressed air purity is classified.

Particles: For solid particles, this part comes from many different areas.  The surrounding ambient air that is being drawn into the air compressor is filtered, but the intake filter will only remove large diameter particles.  The smaller diameter particles will go through the filter and into the compressed air system.  Another part is rust particles that come from steel air pipes and receiver tanks.  Over time, rust will flake off and create particles that can affect pneumatic equipment.  Other particles can come from components inside the air compressor, valves, etc., that wear and breakdown.  In the ISO column for Particles, it is separated into three different micron ranges and concentrations.  The removal of particles from the compressed air is done by traps and compressed air filters.  EXAIR offers two types; Filter Separators with 5-micron filtration and Oil Removal Filters with 0.03-micron filtration.  There are other types of filtration systems depending on your ISO requirement.

Water:  Humidity is a natural occurrence.  It can be measured as a dew point temperature.  This is the temperature at which water will condense and make rain.  Inside an air compressor, the air is ‘squeezed”, and the amount of space for water vapor is reduced.  So, it will condense into liquid form as “rain” inside the pipes.  Air that comes out from an air compressor will always be saturated with water.  To remove liquid water, a mechanical device can be used.  Inside a Filter Separator, a centrifugal separator will spin the air and remove the liquid water.  To remove water vapor, a compressed air dryer is required, like a refrigerant, desiccant, deliquescent, or membrane type.  Each type will have a maximum dew point range that they can reach.  As an example, a refrigerant type will reduce the dew point to 37oF (3oC).  That means that water will not condense until the temperature reaches below 37oF (3oC).

Oil: This category can be found as a liquid, aerosol or vapor, and it includes more than just oil. It contains small hydrocarbons like CO, CO2, SO2, and NOX.  Oil mainly comes from inside an oil-flooded air compressor.  As the air passes through the compressor, it will pick up remnants of oil aerosols and carry them downstream.  With high temperatures inside the air compressor, some of the oil will vaporize.  Even with oil-less type air compressors, carbon vapor can still be an issue.  Small hydrocarbons can come through the air intake and condense inside the system like water vapor above.  To remove the liquid and aerosol type of oil, Oil Removal Filters can be used.  They are designed to “coalesce” the small particles into larger particles for gravity to remove.  Oil vapor requires activated carbon to remove it.  These types of filter units will adsorb the vapor.  This helps to remove odors as well as dangerous chemical vapors that may be in the compressed air line.

There are a variety of pneumatic systems that use the ISO 8573-1 standard.  This will include breathing air operations, food and beverage, pharmaceutical, and the electronics industry.  If you need stringent requirements for your compressed air system, the Air Quality standard should be used by referring to the class numbers above.  This helps to dictate the types of filtration and air dryers that should be used within your pneumatic system.  If you have any questions about your compressed air system, an Application Engineer at EXAIR will be happy to help you.

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

Downtime: It Isn’t Always BAD

Published on by Brian FarnoLeave a comment

When you say Downtime in an industrial or manufacturing setting, it may easily carry a negative connotation. This means that the output of production is not happening and input to production has halted as well. If this is not planned, it is absolutely a worst-case scenario. In our personal lives, though, downtime generally doesn’t have a negative meaning behind it. That’s the time to disconnect and recharge to maximize your output after you return to production and that is exactly what I had the luxury to do recently. This is also a message I received from a person I look up to and trust in their experiences. Vacation time can be looked at similar to a preventative and planned downtime of equipment. Without it we just wear down and eventually productivity grinds to a halt. While hanging out at a lake with my daughters this past week, I helped them hone their fishing skills. They each baited their own hooks with worms and chose their spots. We completely slayed some bluegills, and released every single one of them.

The calm of a storm rolling in when you have nothing to do is serene.

Prescribed maintenance, preventative maintenance, vacations all help to build back into the production of whatever good or service the company provides. The entire production of a facility all starts with the utilities, energy, water, compressed air, steam, other compressed gases, and the personnel. If your power input isn’t maintained, monitoring connections and disconnects, you can find yourself with a lack of service, resulting in dangerous situations. City water is often required for processes or for the facility to function properly, even an office building needs it for plumbing, fire suppression, and drinking. Steam, compressed gases and compressed air may all be required by the processes.

Servicing the compressed air where it starts is one of the most critical steps in operating a compressed air system. Making sure that your compressor has the minimum downtime, all starts with the preventative and prescriptive maintenance. One of the first tasks should always be changing and monitoring the intake air filter. Like Russ Bowman said a while back in his blog, take a deep breath, if you sneeze or smell something that is from the intake air your nose just took in from the surrounding area. That’s even after your nose hair has already partially filtered air intake. Your compressor is no different. If you let it suck up debris, dust, and pollen, then it is eventually going to have a failure. Instead of sneezing, it may burn up a vane, valve, scroll or screw. That is going to be a considerably higher cost and longer downtime than just performing the manufacturer’s listed items to maintain optimal performance.

The compressor shown above according to the caretaker receives a regular change on the airfilter every month. This is just before the cleaning and changeover. Not only do they change the filter, they make sure to clean the entire housing inside and out. That’s one of the ways this compressor has lasted with minimal downtime over the past 20 years.

If you want to learn more about other key maintenance items in your compressed air system, please contact an Application Engineer today.

Brian Farno, MBA – CCASS Application Engineer

BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF

Erratic Performance And Simple Solutions

Published on by Brian FarnoLeave a comment

If that’s not a vague title that would get you to click on the blog, then I’m not sure what is. The image definitely adds some context to what this may be about. Nearly one year ago I wrote a blog about tailored cooling solutions and industrial controls. It’s a fairly simple process that doesn’t require a lot of time and often results in some improved performance for electrical enclosures running cooler. Well, one of the keys to understanding how to do this is the basics of air movement and always starting at the top.

The 2017 Honda Pioneer 1000. Sitting nose in to the closest light we had before, we replaced batteries so we could easily see where to hook up the jumper pack.

This past weekend I took two of my daughters and one of their friends to some other friend’s property near Lake Cumberland, Kentucky. If you have a property like this with equipment like side by side or boat that isn’t used frequently, then you understand how easy it is for equipment to start acting up for no apparent reason. Even if you run a machine shop or company with excellent preventative maintenance, you know that sometimes, stuff happens and machines go offline. This past weekend, we had three of three machines go offline at the property. After some troubleshooting and repairs, we had 3 for three back up and running. The fun part for me is always the troubleshooting and discovery.

The first was the boat. I didn’t get any repair photos. It is a 150 HP out-drive motor that had fuel issues. We traced it to a fueling problem and after fresh fuel, fuel filter, new spark plug, swapping coils between locations, and swapping fuel injectors, we determined there must’ve been a clog in the fuel rail as it cleared up and ran great. That’s when the rain hit. So then we went on to the side by side. This beautiful machine right here was going into limp mode anytime you reached wide open throttle. One of two batteries was fairly weak and required jump-starting, so we started there, then it still did it. When working on the batteries, we did find a nice little mouse nest in the air pre-cleaner. That box has about a 2″ I.D. tube that runs from the front of the vehicle to just behind the front seats where the motor and air filter/box sit. After the battery didn’t solve the issue, we moved to the next basic issue; air and fuel. It had plenty of fresh fuel, so we started with air. When we removed the air filter, we found an entire 44 gallon trash bag that had essentially been vacuum formed into the air filter. We had two guesses. One was the mice, the other was that someone who previously owned it must’ve sat it in that 2″ tube when they were working on the vehicle to prevent anything from falling down it and over time it worked its way back to fully block the filter. Once that was removed, the machine ran tremendously better with no issues. So a simple lack of air movement took this performance machine to its knees.

The culprit… The 44 gallon bag was formed to the pleats of the air filter. Still in usable condition, needless to say, it went into the permanent trash container far away from the air intake.

That’s a lot like an air-to-air heat Exchanger with a filter that hasn’t been changed in a machine or production area full of floating air debris. I’ve seen spindle drives on CNC machines that had heat dissipation fins where you couldn’t see the fins, just a brick of oily soaked chips. This will cause drive failure in no time, just like the side by side, Lack of appropriate air movement took the machine offline and no fun was had.

If you want to look at a solution with no moving parts and that is extremely reliable, much like the fact we left the hood open, so the mice don’t feel so secure in that pre-filter area, contact an Application Engineer today to let us help you size your Cabinet Cooler System. Even if you want to use these as a fail-safe for your equipment.

Brian Farno, MBA – CCASS Application Engineer

BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF

Take It All In – Just Filter It

Published on by Brian FarnoLeave a comment
The Nose – Only the Nose Knows

Take a nice deep breath as you read this. In through the nose. If you are like me right now, due to Fall allergies you’ll have a little bit of a restriction, hold it for just a second and then breathe out through the mouth. The body is an amazing thing, when we breathe in through our nose the body has some natural filtration built in that is also known as nose hair. While not the most attractive thing to most, it is important. The hairs in the nose help to filter out allergens and catch foreign debris.

An Improperly maintained Cabin Air Filter on a car makes a great bed for mice

Other items you interact with daily have similar air intake filtration. A car often has both an intake air filter and even an in-cabin air filter, these both protect various parts. The engine air filter is vital to prevent dust, debris and even excessive water from entering into the precision machined and assembled motor. The HVAC system in every business or home generally has an intake air filter in order to protect the coils and heater box.

There’s another system in most manufacturing facilities that should always have a filter on it, and that is the compressed air system. Properly maintaining and filtering the incoming ambient air feed before it is compressed starts the process of on the right foot to optimize performance and insure efficiency is maintained from the start of the entire process. These filters are like many others and can be part of a preventative maintenance program. The air compressor manufacturer will have a recommendation on frequency for the various types.

Old Piston driven air compressor intake air filter.

If these filters are left unchanged then the compressor begins to have restricted flow on the intake which then results in less air being pulled in or maybe the filter is removed and then the debris all gets pulled in and sent through to become foreign debris inside the compressor. Both of these will cause the compressor to wear or overheat and work harder to compress the air and send it into the storage tank. This results in premature maintenance needed on the compressors and or point of use devices.

Thus, always filter your incoming air. Whether for your air compressor, car engine, or house, start with a fresh intake and then keep it optimized from there. The payback will be longer lasting equipment that operates at a higher efficiency. And remember, breathe in through your nose.

If you would like to discuss your filtration setups, feel free to reach out to an Application Engineer.

Brian Farno
Application Engineer
BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF