Static charge is a surface phenomenon, which means it has to be addressed on the entire surface that it’s causing a problem on. For sheets, plates, films — anything that’s flat and stacked or rolled, really — EXAIR Gen4 Super Ion Air Knives are a popular solution. They generate a laminar, even curtain of ionized air that’ll dissipate the static charge on a surface up to 9 feet wide quietly, effectively…and quickly. For smaller pieces & parts, we’ve got Ion Air Jets and Ion Air Cannons that create a more focused stream of ionized air. For portability, the Gen4 Ion Air Gun is essentially a handheld version of the Ion Air Jet.
For pipe, hose, tube, wire, cable, extruded or molded continuous strands…anything that needs static elimination on all sides, really…EXAIR Super Ion Air Wipes are a great fit. They generate a uniform 360° ionized airflow to eliminate static on the surface of those kinds of products. They come in two sizes: one with a 2″ inside diameter, and one with a 4″ inside diameter. The split clamp design means you don’t have to ‘thread’ the material through…you simply undo the latch on one side and fit it back around the material or part.
360° blow off AND fast, efficient static dissipation: EXAIR Super Ion Air Wipe.
Gen4 Super Ion Air Wipe
Both of the photos above show Super Ion Air Wipes used for plastic hose — and that is indeed a VERY popular application for them. They’re also successfully used for tubing, wire, pipe, extrusions, anything that can pass through the 2″ or 4″ inside diameter & needs to have static charge removed from it.
If you have problems with static charge, EXAIR has solutions. Give me a call.
Russ Bowman, CCASS
Application Engineer Visit us on the Web Follow me on Twitter Like us on Facebook
Compressed air is one of the most expensive utilities in any manufacturing facility—yet it’s often treated as “free.” One of the biggest contributors to wasted compressed air is the continued use of open pipes, drilled pipes, or homemade blowoffs for cleaning, drying, and cooling applications.
While these methods may seem simple and inexpensive, they are inefficient, unsafe, noisy, and costly over time. EXAIR Engineered Air Nozzles are designed to solve these exact problems. Often reducing compressed air consumption by up to 70% while improving performance.
Open pipes release compressed air directly to atmosphere with no control, no amplification, and no optimization. This creates several major issues:
Excessive Air Consumption
An open 1/4″ pipe at 80 PSIG can consume 25+ SCFM continuously. Multiply that across shifts, days, and multiple stations, and the cost quickly adds up.
Poor Performance
Open pipes create turbulent airflow that dissipates rapidly, requiring higher pressure and more air to achieve acceptable results.
High Noise Levels
Uncontrolled air release produces noise levels that can exceed OSHA limits, creating safety and compliance concerns.
Safety Risks
Open pipes can generate dangerous dead-end pressures and flying debris, posing serious injury risks to operators. Creating real situations where
What Makes EXAIR Engineered Air Nozzles Different?
EXAIR Engineered Air Nozzlesare precision-designed to maximize force while minimizing air consumption. Instead of wasting compressed air, they use advanced airflow geometry to do more with less.
Air Amplification
EXAIR nozzles use the Coandă effect to entrain surrounding ambient air. For every unit of compressed air used, multiple units of free air are pulled into the flow—creating higher output force without increased air usage.
Optimized Flow Patterns
Rather than chaotic turbulence, engineered nozzles produce laminar, focused airflow that delivers better cleaning, drying, and cooling results at lower pressure.
Significant Air Savings
It’s common to see 30–70% reductions in air consumption when replacing open pipes with EXAIR air nozzles—often with improved performance.
Eleminate Safety Risks
Air nozzles and jets are designed to operate well above 30 PSIG while creating dead end pressures well below the OSHA limits. Giving you better performance safley.
EXAIR Model 1100 Super Air Nozzle Replaces Open Copper Pipe Blow Off
Replacing open pipes with EXAIR Engineered Air Nozzles is one of the simplest and most cost-effective improvements you can make to a compressed air system.
If you’re serious about:
Reducing energy costs
Improving safety
Lowering noise levels
Getting more from your compressed air
…it’s time to stop blowing money into the air.
EXAIR Engineered Air Nozzles prove that better design beats brute force—every time.
One could make a good point about “The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year” being right now because…well, the song just says so, right? I can get on board with that, because I’m the world’s biggest sucker for Christmas music:
Of course, that song was used in one of my favorite ad campaigns of all time to describe a season that started a few months earlier:
But I’m going to have to go with “right now” not only for the Christmas music, but for my personal favorite EXAIR seasonal promotion:
Right now, through the end of the year, EXAIR will give you a Safety Air Gun with any Super Air Knife purchase. Not only do you get THE most efficient and quietest compressed air blowing product on the market today (we have data to back that up from a wide variety of products & devices that customers have sent in for Efficiency Lab testing), we’re going to sweeten the deal with free stuff.
First, let’s talk about the Super Air Knives:
They come in lengths from 3″ to 9ft. No matter how small, or big, your blowoff needs are, we’ve got you covered. If you need something longer than 9ft, they can be coupled together for a continuous, laminar airflow curtain as long as you need it to be.
Air Knife Coupling Bracket Kit
We make them in low cost, lightweight aluminum, tough & corrosion resistant Type 303 Stainless Steel, even tougher & more corrosion resistant Type 316 Stainless Steel, and PVDF (polyvinylidene fluoride) thermoplastic with Hastelloy hardware & PTFE shims for the highest level of corrosion resistance available.
PVDF Super Air Knife Kits include the Air Knife itself (PVDF body, Hastelloy C-276 hardware, and PTFE Shims,) a PTFE Shim Set, an Automatic Drain Filter Separator, and Pressure Regulator.
They’re efficient and quiet — for the same reason. See, the compressed air supply exits through a precise, narrow slot between the Cap & Body, which is precision finished, generating a 40:1 entrainment ratio. That means that for every SCFM of compressed air that the Super Air Knife uses, it entrains 40 SCFM of air from the surrounding environment…THAT’S efficiency. In doing so, that entrained air forms a low velocity boundary layer around the powerful, high velocity primary air stream. This layer serves to attenuate the sound level of that hard-hitting curtain of air, resulting in a sound level of only 69dBA.
And, if you order before 12/31/2025, we’ll throw in a FREE EXAIR Soft Grip Safety Air Gun, fitted with a Super Air Nozzle. If you’re using a loud, inefficient air gun for handheld blowoff, you really need to try one of these. They use the primary compressed air stream to entrain ‘free’ air from the surrounding environment as well, which generates a low velocity boundary layer for sound reduction too. The Super Air Nozzle is well suited for a wide range of industrial blowoff applications, and the Soft Grip Safety Air Gun is ideal for hours of continuous use without fatigue.
EXAIR Super Air Nozzles entrain an enormous amount of air from the surrounding environment, making them efficient, and quiet.
Need something right away? EXAIR has you covered there too: all of these (and pretty much any of our other Intelligent Compressed Air Products) are on the shelf and ready to ship, same day, with orders received by 2pm EST. If you’ve got a blowoff application that you’d like to find a safe, quiet, and efficient solution for, we can help…give me a call.
Russ Bowman, CCASS
Application Engineer Visit us on the Web Follow me on Twitter Like us on Facebook
A technician from a company that performs comprehensive audits of compressed air systems called me with a sad, sad story. A client had just installed a brand-new state-of-the-art rotary scroll compressor with a variable speed drive…they were going all-out on efficiency, which is great. During the technician’s walk-through, however, he noticed a blowoff on a conveyor belt — they actually heard it before they could see it — a black iron pipe with a series of holes drilled along the length, plumbed with compressed air being supplied, unregulated, from a 100psig header.
The pipe was 18″ long and had 30 holes, 1/8″ diameter each, drilled along the length. From the table below, we can presume that this drilled pipe was consuming as much as 475.8 SCFM:
I say “as much as 475.8 SCFM” because the technician noted the holes were simply drilled through, they weren’t rounded, so I calculated the flow from a 1/8″ orifice at 100psig (26.0 CFM) with a 0.61 multiplier for sharp edges orifices. Also, the inlet pressure of the drilled pipe is not known. With a 1″ pipe supplying it, the flow could be limited to around 350 SCFM, due to line loss in the pipe.
The technician first asked about installing Air Nozzles in the drilled pipe. That’d mean drilling those holes out and tapping them individually. This COULD be done, and the drilled pipe could be fitted with 30 Model 1110-PEEK Nano Super Air Nozzles, with an air consumption of 8.3 SCFM @80psig each, for a total of 249 SCFM. That’s a significant reduction, but also a lot of work on the drilled pipe. I recommended replacing it entirely with a Super Air Knife.
First, the drilled pipe: Let’s give all the benefit of the doubt here and assume that the line loss had indeed limited the air consumption to 350 SCFM. Operating 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year, and using the US Department of Energy’s estimate that compressed air costs $0.25 per 1,000 Standard Cubic Feet used, the annual operating cost of the drilled pipe was $10,920.00:
350 SCFM X 60 min/hr X 8 hrs/day X 5 days/week X 52 weeks/year X $0.25/1,000 SCF = $10,920.00
Drilling & tapping those holes for EXAIR Nano Super Air Nozzles (8.3 SCFM ea X 30 = 249 SCFM total) would result in an annual operating cost of $7,768.80:
249 SCFM X 60 min/hr X 8 hrs/day X 5 days/week X 52 weeks/year X $0.25/1,000 SCF = $7,768.80
Replacing the drilled pipe with an EXAIR 18″ Super Air Knife (52.2 SCFM) drops the annual operating cost even further, to $1,628.64:
52.2 SCFM X 60 min/hr X 8 hrs/day X 5 days/week X 52 weeks/year X $0.25/1,000 SCF = $1,628.64
To put that further into perspective, the 2025 List Price for an 18″ Aluminum Super Air Knife is $533.00. It costs almost $9,300.00 per year LESS to operate than the drilled pipe. That means the Air Knife will have paid for itself in operating costs in just under 21 days.
To put that even FURTHER into perspective, the ~300 SCFM reduction in compressed air consumption is approximately 75HP worth of a typical industrial air compressor load. It’s not uncommon for a mid-to-large sized company to have more than one air compressor, and 50HP is a common size for a backup compressor. If that was the case in the facility that my technician caller was auditing, he’d be letting them know that this $533.00 investment that’s going to save them over $9,000.00 a year is ALSO going to allow them to shut down one of their air compressors. Completely.
So, THAT’S what’s so awful about a drilled pipe. If you have any in your facility, we should talk.
Russ Bowman, CCASS
Application Engineer Visit us on the Web Follow me on Twitter Like us on Facebook
