Tag: liquid blowoff

From Field to Market: How EXAIR Helps Streamline Vegetable Processing

Published on by John BallLeave a comment

Homonyms are words that are pronounced and spelled the same but have different meanings.  In this blog, I will cover the word lettuce.  One meaning is the leafy vegetable and the other is money.  And I like to save both.  I have an agriculture application that I would like to share where EXAIR was able to supply different products to help save lettuce. 

PowerStream Liquid Nozzle

When vegetables come from the field, they need to be cleaned and packaged for delivery to grocery stores.  The first thing that they need to do is to wash the leaves to remove dirt, compost, and bugs.  They had drilled pipes to spray water onto the leaves, using a lot of water. They were looking to do it more economically. The vegetable packing house purchased the EXAIR PowerStream Liquid Nozzles, model DL8075SS, to do the washing.  These stainless steel nozzles were mounted on a manifold to spray water onto the lettuce leaves.  With the PowerStream nozzles, we can break the water into smaller droplet sizes to increase coverage and reduce water requirements.  Thus, saving money.

The next step would be to dry the lettuce.  They were using a blower-powered air knife, but they could not remove all the insects as it was not powerful enough.  Also, by blowing hotter air which was created by the blower, lettuce would start to brown much quicker.  To improve, they purchased a model 110036SS Stainless Steel Super Air Knife.  The Super Air Knife is an efficient, powerful way to blow compressed air.  With a 40:1 amplification ratio, it will draw in 40-parts of ambient air to 1-part compressed air.  From our Super Air Knife, we blow ambient temperature air, add mass to give a much higher force to remove the water and the insects, and save on compressed air consumption. 

To reduce spoilage, you must have the proper equipment.  For this company, they were able to improve their process to increase production.  And by utilizing less water and less compressed air, they were able to increase profit.  If you would like to improve your processes in packing houses, EXAIR has a variety of products that can help you.  You can contact an Application Engineer to discuss.  For the company above, more lettuce out the door meant more lettuce in their pockets. 

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

Photo of Vegetables by akadarcee.  Pixabay content license.

Proper Filtration Eliminates the Need for Maintenance of Super Air Amplifier in Brewing Application

Published on by Tyler DanielLeave a comment
EXAIR’s Super Air Amplifiers utilize a patented shim design to maintain critical positioning of component parts. This allows a precise amount of compressed air to be released at exact intervals toward the center of the Super Air Amplifier. This creates a constant, high velocity outlet flow across the entire cross-sectional area. Free, ambient air is entrained through the unit, resulting in high amplification ratios. The balanced outlet airflow minimizes wind shear to produce sound levels far lower than other similar air movers.

As with any EXAIR Product, we always recommend the installation of a particulate filter. If there is any oil present in your air supply, an oil filter is also recommended after the particulate filter. Nearly all of our products have no moving parts to wear out and will never require maintenance so long as they’re supplied with clean, condensate free, oil-free air. If the air is not filtered prior, anything contained within the air is going to be passed through into your process. Debris could  also eventually clog up the tight orifices in the product itself. Eventually the debris/oil will end up clogging it up and stop performing as it should. This leads to downtime while the root cause of the issue is sorted out, and subsequent maintenance of the product that has been clogged.

I recently worked with a brewing company that had a machine with one of our ¾” Model 120020 Super Air Amplifiers installed. It was used on a canning line and would dry off the cans after a washing operation before being marked with a date code. Up until recently it had worked just fine without any issues. Now they were noticing residual moisture leftover on the cans that was preventing a legible date code from being marked on the outside. Further investigation led them to determine that the outlet flow from the amplifier had been reduced to almost nothing. Since their compressor delivers oil-free air and they used stainless steel piping, they didn’t think it was necessary to install a filter.

The Super Air Amplifier is a maintenance-free product, when supplied with clean, condensate free air of course. After removing the plug from the body, they noticed a significant amount of oil present inside the plenum chamber and around the shim. This was clogging up the nozzle and restricting airflow through the unit. The photo below shows the inside of the amplifier prior to cleaning. The fine-toothed shim at the bottom is hardly even noticeable. In looking upstream, they noticed an oiler that was necessary for many of the other pneumatic components of the machine. This same air supply was being used to supply the compressed air to our Super Air Amplifier.

At our instruction, they installed an oil-filter on a new line dedicated just to this amplifier. And after cleaning the Super Air Amplifier the problem drying off the cans immediately stopped and they were back up in running in no time. Now that they had removed the oil from their air supply, this issue won’t return and they can begin operating the way we intend it to, maintenance free!

Tyler Daniel
Application Engineer
E-mail: TylerDaniel@EXAIR.com
Twitter: @EXAIR_TD

Non-Contact Wiping with the Super Air Knife

Published on by John BallLeave a comment

A glove manufacturer needed to decrease the reject rate with their natural rubber gloves. They were seeing brush marks in the rubber material which was a visual defect.  Their operation used a ceramic hand that was used to form the size of the glove.  After the rubber material was applied, it was dipped into water to set the material.  It would come out of the water tank, and a mechanism on the conveyor would rotate the hands to “shake” off the excess water.  It would then go over brushes to wipe the water from in between the fingers.  Much of the water had to be removed before it entered into the coagulation tank because it would affect the stretching ability of the glove.  With their current operation, they were seeing the scuff marks from the brushes which was a visual defect.  This cost them down time and product rejects.  So, they contacted EXAIR to see if we could help.

Brushes used to wipe the gloves
Brushes used to wipe the gloves

In looking at their process, they had two conveyors running side by side with each other. This made it a bit more difficult as we could only work on one side.  Being that the ceramic hand rotated around twice in 36” before hitting the brushes, I could focus in this area.  When it comes to wiping products without touching it, air is required.  And EXAIR knows how to use compressed air very efficiently, safely, and effectively.  For this application, I suggested our model 110236 Super Air Knife kit.  It has an overall length of 36” which could span the target area.  It comes with a filter, regulator, and shim set to clean and control the air flow.  It would be able to “wipe” the water off the hands like a non-contact squeegee.  The air flow from the Super Air Knife will hug the exterior portion of the hand; removing the water from the surface and in between the fingers.  They removed the brushes and did not have to worry about brush marks on the glove.

EXAIR Super Air Knife
EXAIR Super Air Knife

If you require a non-contact wiping in your application, use EXAIR Intelligent Compressed Products to accomplish this. You will not have to keep replacing items that wear or use items that cause damage to your product. EXAIR has the ability to use compressed air to create a strong force without scraping or scratching your material.

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