Tag: line vacs

Line Vac Air Operated Conveyors: What to Know When Specifying

Published on by bdwagesLeave a comment

So you are thinking about using a Line Vac… Is it time to replace that ladder and bucket, and automate? There are many factors involved when deciding to use a conveyor system such as EXAIR Line Vacs. First of all let’s take a look at your product that needs conveyed. Will the integrity of your media be compromised by adding this much air to it? How heavy is it? What type of (how much) surface area does it have?

You know your media better than most. You should be able to answer most of those questions pretty easily, but what about the weight? For the weight, we work best knowing the bulk density, or pounds per cubic foot. If you do not readily know, this is easily found by finding the weight of your media in a box (or container). Then take the total cubic inches of the box (L x W x H) and divide that by 1728 (cubic inches per cubic foot), this will give you the cubic feet of that box. Then you simply divide the weight by the cubic feet, and you now have the density.

Line Vacs can convey many things.

Next we need to focus on your conveyance run. We would like to know what type of container is your product sitting in? A super sack, a hopper, a drum, a box? And where is it going? How far away is the destination hopper, dumpster, assembly station, etc.? This will help us determine the type of fitting or tools necessary to extract or release the media. How high do you need to go? How far horizontally? Our Line Vacs, are amazing, but they do have their limits. We will also need to know if there are any turns, and at what angles. Turns are many times unavoidable, but will have an adverse effect on the conveyance run as the airflow is halted and or deflected. Is there a way to minimize or eliminate the turns?

The final question is; how many pounds per minute do you need to be conveyed?

With the size, mass, and geometry of your parts, along with the vertical lift length, and the horizontal conveyance length, added to the turns and twists, you are just about ready to call one of our our application engineers for recommendations. We have some comparison materials for conveyance rates, to get you close to your actual needs. Here are some published conveyance rates as well:

There is one more part to this equation. What type and size of Line Vac will you need? EXAIR has many types of Line Vacs to choose from. As with most products, we have options that take into consideration the temperature and the abrasiveness of your product. We also have options to fit the type of conveyance hose or pipe you want to use , such as sanitary fittings, or threaded. And since we manufacture these right here in Cincinnati, OH, we can make custom Line Vacs for customers fairly quickly. We have designed and manufactured them with custom bolt on flanges, special materials or inlet sizes to name a few.

EXAIR Line Vacs: For bulk material conveyance through lines from 3/8″ to 6″, in aluminum, 303SS, 316SS, or abrasion resistant hardened alloy, available from stock with the widest variety of connections in the industry.

Please do not hesitate to call. We will be happy to help you with any technical questions about our products.

Application Engineer

Brian Wages

EXAIR Corporation
Visit us on the Web
Follow me on Twitter

Yellow Ladder pic from OpenClipart-Vectors / 27385 & Bucket Pic from Jazella / 704 images on a Pixabay License

Big Nozzle, Big Award…Again!

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

The year was 2016, and it was quite a time for sports fans:

  • Team USA dominated at the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Swimmer Michael Phelps won five Gold Medals, and gymnast Simone Biles won a Gold Medal on her own, and another for the team event, contributing to the 46 total Gold Medals won by United States Olympians.
  • The Chicago Cubs and Cleveland Indians took the World Series to all seven games…and extra innings in Game Seven. That makes it hard to disparage either team, but the Cubs prevailed, winning the Fall Classic for the first time in 108 years.
  • World Series heartbreak notwithstanding, Cleveland sports fans were pretty happy a few months earlier when the Cavaliers cinched the NBA Championship in seven games, defeating the heavily favored Golden State Warriors…who beat the Cavs in both of their regular season games that year.

Another big winner (non-sports) that year was EXAIR Corporation’s Model EF5010SS External Mix Narrow Angle Flat Fan Pattern 1/2 NPT Atomizing Spray Nozzle…it won Plant Engineering’s Product of the Year Bronze Medal Award in the Fluid Handling category. Yes, there’s a Compressed Air category, and our products have won a TON of those too…as well as some other categories:

  • Material Handling (Line Vacs)
  • Maintenance Products (Super Air Nozzles)
  • Environmental Health (High Lift Reversible Drum Vac)
  • Automation & Controls (EFC Electronic Flow Control)
Just a few of our past Product of the Year award winners in categories other than “Compressed Air”.

Anyway, now it’s 2021, and the No-Drip version of that Atomizing Spray Nozzle – Model EF6010SS – has won Plant Engineering’s GOLD Medal Award in the Fluid Handling category. Model EF6010SS offers the same performance as the EF5010SS:

  • Liquid flow rates from 141 to 303 gallons per hour (tested with water)
  • Flat fan spray dimensions from 15″ wide (6″ from target) to 25″ wide (15″ from target)
  • Atomized spray at a distance of up to 35 feet away

And, of course, the No-Drip feature means you can instantly stop liquid flow by shutting off the compressed air supply, up to 180 cycles a minute, if needed. This is a great feature to have to cut down on the cost – and the MESS – associated with overspraying.

Our comprehensive line of Atomizing Spray Nozzles has options for most any liquid that can be sprayed, with a wide range of flow rates and pattern size/shapes. The 1/2 NPT External Mix Narrow Angle Flat Fan model is ideally suited for liquids with higher viscosities where a higher flow rate/thicker coating is needed, as opposed to a humidification or misting application, where a smaller Atomizing Spray Nozzle might be specified. Some current, successfully reported, applications include:

  • Snack food provider – applying flavoring to bulk snack materials.
  • Commercial bakery – spraying cooking oil onto pans used in a conveyor oven.
  • Sporting goods manufacturer – applying adhesive to the tops of skateboard decks to glue the grip tape on.

If you’d like to discuss a particular liquid spraying application, I’d love to help…give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
EXAIR Corporation
Visit us on the Web
Follow me on Twitter
Like us on Facebook

Compressed Air Receiver Tanks On The “Demand” Side

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

Most any air compressor is going to have a receiver tank…from the “pancake” types that might hold a gallon or so, to the large, multi-tank arrangements that facilitate both cooling and drying of compressed air in major industrial installations.  The primary purpose of these receiver tanks is to maintain proper operation of the compressor itself…they store a pressurized volume of air so that the compressor doesn’t have to run all the time.  Receiver Tanks, however, can also be used to eliminate fluctuations at points of use, especially in facilities where there might be a lot of real estate between the compressor and the compressed air consuming products.

Cover image courtesy of: Tennessee Valley Authority; SVG version by Tomia, CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons

Sanitary Flange Line Vacs for Bulk Conveying

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

Piping systems have been a hallmark of human civilization for almost as long as people have been living in community with each other. Evidence of complex earthen pipe systems, with flanged fittings & asphalt sealants, date to 2700 BC. These were used for crop irrigation, potable water distribution, and wastewater removal in ancient civilizations from the Mediterranean to the Far East.

Over the centuries, new ways to use pipe led to new ways to make pipe.  Scientists and engineers figured out ways to make pipe stronger, lighter, cheaper, and in a variety of materials.  One of the more recent milestones is the development of sanitary piping and fittings.  The stringent cleanliness controls in certain industries (food and pharmaceutical, I’m looking at you) require highly corrosion resistant materials of construction.  The inside & outside surfaces of the pipe have to be finely finished so that they can be thoroughly and positively cleaned, with no crevices, “nooks & crannies,” etc., for material to gather or cling.  And since regular cleaning & sterilization is performed, the fittings must be able to be made & unmade in a manner that still provides for positive sealing when the system is restored to operation.

EXAIR Line Vac Air Operated Conveyors have always been well suited for applications like this.  With their open, unobstructed throats and smooth bores, they’re intuitively easy to clean, by design.  And we’ve made them, for years, in Type 316 Stainless Steel – the preferred material of construction for many food and pharmaceutical applications.  Many users in these industries were able to install them in sanitary piping systems by welding the flanges on our Stainless Steel Line Vacs, or by installing adapters on our Threaded Stainless Steel Line Vacs.

In the spring of 2017, EXAIR released the Sanitary Flange Line Vac with those same users in mind – eliminating the need to weld or thread flanges onto existing products.  They feature the same conveyance power as our Stainless Steel Line Vacs, and can even be modified to meet Heavy Duty Line Vac performance, if needed.  There are four sizes: 1-1/2″, 2″, 2-1/2″, and 3″…which covers the most popular size range of sanitary pipe systems.

While the sanitary piping systems are certainly most often found in those cleanliness-critical food & pharma type applications, other users incorporate them because of the smooth, continuous bore of the pipe and fittings, as opposed to a threaded pipe system, where the OD of the pipe threads into the ID of the fittings, causing a “step” in the throughput.  Because sanitary fittings mate via face-to-face flange seals, this eliminates that “step” which can make for a catch-point for certain items.  It’s for this very reason that a popular ammunition manufacturer uses sanitary pipe systems to convey shell casings…because they tumble with such turbulence in the air flow, they are especially prone to hanging up on any kind of catch-point.  So, they use sanitary piping & fittings, long radius elbows, and EXAIR Model 161150-316 1-1/2″ Sanitary Flange Line Vacs.

Air conveying of certain items, like these ammo shell casings, can be prone to clogging or jamming in systems where pipe, hose, and/or fittings are inserted into each other, creating catch-points.

EXAIR has a wide selection of engineered compressed air products that are “textbook” solutions for certain applications, but also make perfect sense for use in places you might not have thought of.  If you have a bulk material conveyance operation you’d like to discuss, give me a call.

Russ Bowman
Application Engineer
EXAIR Corporation
Visit us on the Web
Follow me on Twitter
Like us on Facebook

 

 

 

Shells photo courtesy of hydropeek  Creative Commons License