Canned food has been around since the early 1800s, when the French government offered 12,000 francs (I don’t know how much that is in today’s currency, but it sounds like a LOT) to the first person to come up with a way to effectively and affordably preserve food, so the French army could take it with them during Napoleon’s planned conquest of Europe. Nicolas Appert, a candy maker and chef to the rich and famous, had been experimenting with cooking food inside sealed containers and noticed that it didn’t spoil if the seals didn’t leak. So he demonstrated his technique to the powers that be, and walked away with the 12,000 franc prize. It didn’t really pan out for the army because the process was slow & expensive, but canned food became something of a novelty among the aforementioned rich & famous of the day. This WAS the heyday of the Industrial Revolution, though, and food companies quickly advanced the technology for mass production. Today, there are very few food products that you won’t find a canned or jarred version of. In the early days, you had to use a can opener, but today you can find pull tabs on many cans, especially beverages.
Ever since Jimmy Buffett cut his heel on the one on the left in “Margaritaville”, we’ve been drinking from cans with ‘pop tops’ like the one on the right.
A more recent innovation is a peel-off foil seal on the lid that seals the product for freshness, immediately after packaging. It’s then removed by the consumer after purchase, and the container is commonly supplied with a plastic lid that snaps onto the rim.
A container manufacturer uses Model 3925 Adjustable Spot Cooler Systems with Dual Outlet Cold Air Hoses to rapidly cool the freshly heated sealed foil onto metal lids like those that are used for coffee cans. This allows them to move the lids from the heat sealing station to the next process faster.
From left to right: EXAIR Mini Coolers, Cold Guns, and Adjustable Spot Coolers come with Magnetic Bases for instant installation.
Because they generate cold air flow on demand, this is a very common application for EXAIR Vortex Tube Spot Cooler products. With no moving parts to wear or electrical components to burn out, they’re reliable & durable. If you’d like to find out more, give me a call.
Russ Bowman, CCASS
Application Engineer Visit us on the Web Follow me on Twitter Like us on Facebook
Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519) was the quintessential Renaissance Man: artist, philosopher, scientist, mathematician, and an inventor ahead of his time. From the 15th to 18th Centuries, though, he was primarily known for his paintings. Then, in 1797, Giovanni Battista Venturi published his “Essai sur les ouvrages physico-mathématiques de Léonard de Vinci”, which brought to light Da Vinci’s immense volume of work in the scientific fields of fluid dynamics and aerodynamics. Curiously, he was only able to do this because of the access he gained to notebooks that had been looted by Napoleon’s troops during their occupation of Milan, Italy, and brought back to France.
To conclude that Venturi was just a writer, though, would be as bad as regrettable as calling Da Vinci just a painter. Born into a rich family in northern Italy, he was a star pupil at the Jesuit seminary in his hometown of Bibbiano. He was such a good student that in 1756 – at the age of ten – he started attending the seminary in Reggio Emilia, studying logic, metaphysics, and mathematics.
As a teenager, he enrolled in the university there, studying physics and biology before returning to the seminary, where he was ordained as a priest in 1769. He taught logic at the seminary for five years, and then went on to “the big city” of Modena to teach philosophy and geometry at the university there. He was 28 when he started there, and by age 30 he was teaching physics as well.
In addition to his service in the priesthood and at the university, he also held the office of official state engineer, mathematician, and auditor, appointed by the Duke of Modena. This meant he was responsible for the construction of bridges, draining of marsh land, and implementing regulations for the building of dams. And, in his spare time, it seems he also completed the town of Modena’s historical memoirs, a task that had been started by the town historian, but had remained dormant since his passing, some 56 years earlier.
All of this would have earned Venturi local, probably regional, and perhaps even national fame…especially the part about making Leonardo Da Vinci famous for more than just his art. But what really sealed his place in the annals of history was his discovery of a particular fluidic effect: namely, that a reduction in fluid pressure results when a fluid flows from one section of a pipe into a narrower section.
The Venturi effect, named after the real Renaissance man who discovered it, Giovanni Battista Venturi who published a paper on it in 1794.
Despite its discovery in the late 18th Century, it was not actually practically applied for almost 100 years, when an American hydraulic engineer named Clemens Herschel patented a water flow meter, in 1889. He named it the Venturi Meter, and they became prolific in water works around the turn of the century. Coincidentally, Mr. Herschel had a background in bridge building too.
Today, there are numerous machines that use the Venturi effect: fluid moving educator pumps, gas inspirators in grills, stoves, & Bunsen burners, paint atomizers, wine aerators, locomotive engine steam injectors, sandblasting nozzles, scuba diving regulators…and vacuum generators.
That last one is where EXAIR gets involved. We incorporate Venturis into our E-Vac Vacuum Generators, which are capable of vacuum levels up to 27″Hg. They’re used for material handling, pick & place systems, bag/package opening, label placement, vacuum forming, and workholding, just to name a few.
The wide throat diameter of the Adjustable E-Vac makes it suitable for applications where small amounts of particulate and/or liquid may be drawn through.
They’re also used in our Reversible Drum Vac and EasySwitch Wet-Dry Vac Systems. These are just two selections from our extensive line of compressed air operated Industrial Housekeeping Products.
EXAIR Reversible Drum Vacs (left) can fill a 55 gallon drum with water in 90 seconds, using a powerful Venturi. Our Chip Trapper Systems (middle) incorporate a Reversible Drum Vac to vacuum coolant from machine tool sumps for filtration. The EasySwitch Wet-Dry Vac uses a Venturi as well for dry and liquid cleanup applications.
Giovanni Battista Venturi retired in 1813, but continued writing a number of scientific and literary works, including a collection of Galileo’s manuscripts & letters. He died in 1822, at the age of 75.
Russ Bowman, CCASS
Application Engineer Visit us on the Web Follow me on Twitter Like us on Facebook
