Tag: modular hose

Save Money With Engineered Products, Then Save More Money With Rebates

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

One morning last summer, I turned on the water in the shower and waited for it to warm up. And waited…and waited. It was clear something was wrong, so I checked the water heater to find it emptying its contents into the floor drain, through the bottom of the tank, which I found later had rusted away. Between my better-than-average plumbing skills, having a son home from college, and finding out I could keep about $800 in my pocket if I bought a new one and replaced it myself, I woke the boy up (which turned out to be one of the more difficult tasks in the process), drove to my friendly neighborhood home improvement center, and bought myself a new water heater, and we had hot water by the time my wife got home from work that afternoon. Considering the way it started, it turned out to be a pretty good day. Not only was it more efficient (and therefore cheaper to run) than the one I replaced, the water heater I bought also qualified for a rebate, which increased my savings on the project to almost $900. That was some FANTASTIC icing on an already pretty decent cake.

Rewards like this for being energy conscious have been routinely offered by utility companies for years now. One time, I got a box of LED light bulbs, enough weather stripping for TWO houses the size of mine, and water-conserving shower heads, for free, from my electric company as part of a home energy audit. That was a pretty good day too.

Many utility companies across the country have similar programs for residential customers, and commercial ones too. Duke Energy (my free light bulb folks), for example, has a program they call Smart$aver that offers rebates and other incentives to companies for making energy-efficient improvements. Equipment that qualifies for these incentives includes process pumping systems, insulation for injection molding machinery & pellet dryer ducts, low friction v-belts for rotating machinery, and compressed air equipment.

That last one is what I wanted to write about today. It includes improvements to the supply side:

  • Receiver tanks
  • Cycling air dryers
  • Zero-loss condensate drains
  • Compressed air system audits

And the demand side:

EXAIR can help you out with the ones on the demand side. Consider:

Ultrasonic Leak Detector: this handheld device allows you to quickly & easily find leaks in your compressed air system.

EXAIR Model 9207 Ultrasonic Leak Detector filters out audible sound waves and focuses on the ultrasonic sound generated when compressed air finds its way out of a loose fitting, crack, etc. The parabolic disc (left) lets you find the area of the leak(s) and the tube extension (right) directs you to the precise location.
The copper tube used to have a crimped end that was aimed at the part in the chuck. They simply cut it off and used a compression fitting to install the Super Air Nozzle.

Super Air Nozzles: not only will these products get you a rebate, they’ll cost less to operate and will ensure OSHA compliance with regard to your use of compressed air. And they’ll do it quieter, to boot.

Replacing open-ended blow offs with Super Air Nozzles is oftentimes quick and easy. Compression fittings can be used to install them directly onto the ends of existing copper tubing. Stay Set Hoses can replace modular hose, which is great for machine tool coolant delivery but often misapplied for air blowing.

And frankly, I think the engineered products just look better too.

The Duke Energy Smart$aver program is for their customers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky. If that’s not you, though, North Carolina State University’s NC Clean Energy Technology Center has a comprehensive Database of State Incentives for Renewables & Efficiency – DSIRE – that’ll help you find what’s available in your area.

Compressed air isn’t free. Heck, it isn’t even cheap. If you want to find out how much you can save by optimizing your compressed air system in Six Steps, give me a call. And if you want to sweeten the deal with rebates and incentives, contact your local utility company.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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EXAIR’s Industry Leading Super Air Knife Saves You Money

Published on by Tyler DanielLeave a comment

One common application that we get calls for each and every day centers around maximizing compressed air efficiency. I recently got to work with a customer who was using an inefficient blowoff method and was looking to replace it with an engineered compressed air solution. They had a total of (8) extrusion lines, each with (3) modular-hose style flat nozzles installed. Before a cooling bath they had one nozzle remove some of the heat, then as the extruded material exits the water bath another (2) nozzles blowoff any residual water. They were maxing out their compressor’s peak operating capacity and pressure drops across the system were causing problems elsewhere in other processes.

KIMG0161

They were operating each of the flat nozzles at 50 psi using a total of 17 SCFM per nozzle. We first calculated how much air the current method was using. The extrusion lines were run for one full 8-hr shift per day:

17 SCFM/nozzle x 3 nozzles/line = 51 SCFM per extrusion line

51 SCFM x 60 mins x 8hrs x 5 days x 50 weeks = 6,126,000 SCF

The extrusion lines accommodated product that ranged from 1”-2.5” wide. They wanted one single solution to use across all different products. We settled on (3) of our 110003 3” Super Air Knives. Let’s take a look at the compressed air requirement for (3) 110003 Super Air Knives, also operated at 50 psig.

A Super Air Knife will consume 1.9 SCFM/inch when operated at 50 psig:

1.9 SCFM/inch x 3 inches (per knife) = 5.7 SCFM/knife

5.7 SCFM x (3) total knives = 17.1 SCFM

17.1 SCFM x 60 mins x 8hrs x 5 days x 50 weeks = 2,052,000 SCF

Total savings per extrusion line – 6,126,000 SCF – 2,052,000 SCF = 4,074,000 SCF

4,074,000 SCF x 8 extrusion lines = 32,592,000 SCF

By replacing the (3) inefficient nozzles with EXAIR’s Super Air Knives, a whopping 4,074,000 SCF of compressed air is saved each year. With (8) total lines, this equates to a total of 32,592,000 SCF of compressed air. Most companies will know the cost of their compressed air usage per CFM, but a cost of ($0.25/1000 standard cubic feet) is a good baseline to use.

($.25/1000 SCF) x 32,592,000 SCF = $8,148.00 USD

By replacing (3) inefficient nozzles across all (8) extrusion lines with EXAIR’s industry leading Super Air Knife, they were able to save a total of $8,148.00 per year. In as little as (6) months, the Super Air Knives will have already paid for themselves!!

If you’ve been maxing out your compressed air system, don’t necessarily assume you need to increase your overall capacity. Put in a call to an EXAIR Application Engineer and we can take a closer look at the ways your using your compressed air throughout the facility. By replacing some inefficient methods with an engineered solution, we can help you save air and money!

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