Tag: receiver tank

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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Compressed Air Pipe

Intelligent Compressed Air: System Equipment

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

At the end of Naval Nuclear Power School, students who’ve just spent two years learning how to boil water must pass a comprehensive examination board before they’re released into the fleet as real live “Navy Nucs.” One popular question at these boards (in 1987 anyway) was to describe, in detail, the path a drop of seawater takes to become reactor coolant (a warship at sea must be self-reliant, and that includes making our own pure water.) A correct answer would prove the student’s knowledge of various piping systems, the steam distilling and water purification processes, reactor coolant chemistry maintenance, and, if you were lucky, a deep dive into the Six Factor Formula which mathematically defines the six events* that affect the probability of neutron multiplication, and hence, the sustainability of nuclear fission in the reactor core:

*Two of these six events relate to the thermalization of neutrons by the coolant. That’s why it’s considered to be a valid part of the ‘seawater-to-reactor-coolant’ question.
The block on the left represents a cubic foot of air at atmospheric pressure. The one on the right represents how much space the first one takes up when compressed to 100psig.

In that same vein, for today’s EXAIR blog, I thought I’d trace a Standard Cubic Foot (SCF) of air from the compressor room, through a typical industrial compressed air system, to its point of use. First, let’s define what that is: Imagine a cubic foot of air in front of you. If the atmospheric pressure is 14.5psia (average for sea level elevation), the ambient temperature is 68°F, and relative humidity is 0%, then that’s one Standard Cubic Foot of air. Now, let’s say this air is in an ideal compressor room – ‘ideal’ meaning those atmospheric conditions apply – and follow its path to an EXAIR Super Air Knife:

  • Filter, Part 1 (intake): When the air compressor draws our SCF in, it passes through filtration media to remove impurities like dust, oil, and moisture. It’s important to remember that this filter is there to PROTECT THE COMPRESSOR from those contaminants, not to provide any measure of cleanliness to the compressed air itself.
  • Compression: This is where our SCF gets compressed by reciprocal or rotating elements imparting energy to it, and it now occupies considerably less space than it did in the atmosphere. This also raises the temperature. When all the molecules that comprise our SCF get closer together, they run into each other more often, and that increased friction makes them hotter. Which can be bad, unless we do something about it.
  • After cooler: Hot compressed air can cause unsafe surface temperatures and can damage gaskets, seals, or other components in the downstream system. Cooling our SCF down is the first thing we want to do after compressing it.
  • Filter, Part 2 (discharge): While the Intake Filter takes care of impurities that could have damaged the compressor, the compressor itself can add some back into our SCF – like oil, wear particulate from meshing gears or seals on moving parts, etc. You’ll want to remove those as well, before letting them go any further in the system. Contaminants like that can really do a number on the operation and effectiveness of some types of dryers.
  • Dryer: While the intake filter removes some finite amount of moisture from our SCF before compression, the compression cycle increases the moisture concentration of it. Dryers come in different types and configurations, each with their own pros & cons, and certain types are more suitable for certain situations. Here’s a link to a blog on the subject by Jordan Shouse that’s both informative and entertaining!
  • Primary Storage: Once our SCF gets cooled, cleaned, and dried, it can take a little break if it’s not needed right away, in a receiver tank. Such a tank, like EXAIR’s Model 9500-60 60 Gallon Receiver Tank (right), near the compressor discharge, serves several purposes:
    • It maintains header pressure during any load transients that happen too quickly for the compressor to keep up in real time.
    • It provides further moisture removal, as any water that condenses in this receiver can be drained from a valve on the bottom.
    • It also allows the compressed air to cool further.
  • Distribution Header Piping: This is the “highway,” if you will, that our SCF travels to where it’ll be used. It’s not alone, either – there are sometimes hundreds, if not thousands, of other SCF’s passing through every minute. And if it’s not appropriately sized, there’ll be problems akin to traffic jams on crowded roads. The appropriate size and layout of the header piping will be determined by a number of factors – here’s a link to a blog with more details on that.
  • Airdrops: These are the branches from the distribution header that lead to the various points of use in the facility. Our SCF will take whichever one it gets directed to…in this case, the aforementioned EXAIR Super Air Knife. The proper size of the drop piping or hose will be determined by the compressed air consumption of the load(s) serviced by the drop, and its length from the header. In the case of our EXAIR Super Air Knife that our SCF is heading towards, the recommended in feed pipe sizes are listed in the Installation/Maintenance Guide:
The longer the drop length, the larger the diameter needs to be to compensate for line loss due to friction.
  • Filter, Part 3 (point of use): Good engineering practice calls for point-of-use filtration. Our SCF has already been through two filters, I know, but it’s also potentially picked up some more contamination along the way. Rust from the inside walls of iron pipes is the most common culprit. The EXAIR Super Air Knife that our SCF is heading towards needs its supply to be filtered for particulate to a level of 10 microns or less. EXAIR Automatic Drain Filter Separators have 5-micron particulate elements, and centrifugal elements that ‘spin’ out any remaining moisture. Depending on the needs of the application, we also have Oil Removal Filters with coalescing elements for oil/oil vapor. They also provide additional particulate filtration to 0.03 microns.
  • Regulator: It’s taken a good deal of effort and expense to get our SCF to this point, so it only makes sense to use it as efficiently as possible. A Pressure Regulator allows us to precisely ‘dial in’ the supply pressure so that we don’t use it (or any of the other SCF’s that it’s traveling with) any more than needed.
EXAIR Automatic Drain Filter Separators (left) can be directly coupled to Oil Removal Filters (center) and Pressure Regulators (right) for a compact installation, free from threaded connections.
EXAIR’s award-winning EFC Electronic Flow Control is a ‘plug and play’ system that can save you THOUSANDS of dollars in compressed air costs.
  • Shutoff valve: Years ago, I talked to an engineer at a company that was using one of our Super Air Knives to blow off parts that were passed in front of it by a robot. The robot’s arm turned & rotated the part in the air curtain to ensure it got completely blown off. This only took a couple of seconds, as the operators had ‘tweaked’ the arm movement to do it as quickly as possible. However, there were about 15 seconds between parts…and the Super Air Knife WAS BLOWING THAT WHOLE TIME. Since they’d already told me how great their automation techs were at programming the robot, I suggested that they go one more step and install a Solenoid Valve in the supply line to the Super Air Knife and use the robot’s logic to open it right before the robot got there, and close it right after the robot left. Step Four of our Six Steps To Optimizing Your Compressed Air System is to “turn off the compressed air when it’s not in use,” and by doing so, they reduced the compressed air consumption of this one Super Air Knife by about 80%. THAT’S optimized. If you don’t have existing logic to do this, our EFC Electronic Flow Control will do it for you.
  • The Super Air Knife: At long last, our SCF is ready to fulfill its purpose, and the Super Air Knife will help it do so in the most efficient way possible. It uses that SCF of air, along with all the others that pass through, to entrain a WHOLE BUNCH of SCF’s from the surrounding environment. The amplification ratio for EXAIR Super Air Knives is 40:1, making them the most efficient compressed air-blowing products on the market.
EXAIR Super Air Knives come in lengths from 3″ to 108″, and are available from stock in aluminum, 303SS, 316SS, or PVDF.

It’s been a LONG time since I’ve used the Six Factor Formula for the neutron life cycle in nuclear fission (and honestly, I haven’t missed it all that much), but every day, I use formulas and figures related to:

Just to name a few. If you’d like to “math something out,” (just not the Six Factor Formula, please), give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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Secondary Receiver Tanks: Preparing for High-Demand Events.

Published on by John BallLeave a comment
Use intermediate storage near the point of use.

Secondary receiver tanks can be strategically placed throughout the plant to improve the “ebbs and flows” of pneumatic demands.  The primary receiver tanks help to protect the supply side when demands are high, and the secondary receiver tanks help pneumatic systems on the demand side.  The purpose of secondary air storage is for dedicated end-use systems or for additional capacity at the end of distribution lines.  Essentially, it is easier and more efficient for compressed air to travel from a nearby source rather than traveling through long lengths of pipe.  With any high-demand use equipment, it is beneficial to have additional storage installed nearby within the compressed air system.

For comparison, I would like to relate a pneumatic system to an electrical system.  The receiver tanks would be like capacitors.  They store pressurized air like a capacitor stores energy from an electrical source.  If you have ever seen an electrical circuit board, you will notice many capacitors of different sizes throughout the circuit board.  The reason for this is to have a ready source of energy to increase efficiency and speeds with the ebbs and flows of electrical signals.  The same can be said for a pneumatic system with secondary receiver tanks.

To cover a current application, I had a customer that was looking at a model 1122108; 108” (2,743mm) Gen4 Super Ion Air Knife Kit.  The application was to remove static and debris from insulated panels for large refrigerated trailers.  They were worried about how much compressed air it would use, and they were considering a blower-type system.  I went through the negative aspects of blower-type systems, like loud noise levels, capital expense, high maintenance cost, large footprint, and ineffectiveness with turbulent air flows.  But, when you are limited to the amount of compressed air, it may seem difficult to get the best product for your application.  Looking at it another way, I asked him if the process was intermittent; and it was.  The cycle rate was 2 minutes on and 10 minutes off.  I was able to recommend a secondary tank to help ease the high demand for their compressed air system.

To calculate the volume size of your secondary receiver tank, we can use Equation 1 below.  It is the same for sizing a primary receiver tank, but the scalars are slightly different.  The supply line to this tank will typically come from a header pipe that supplies the entire facility.  Generally, it is smaller in diameter, so we have to look at the air supply that it can feed into the tank.  For example, a 1” NPT Schedule 40 pipe at 100 PSIG (7 bar) can supply a maximum of 150 SCFM (255 M3/hr) of air flow.  This value is used for Cap below.  The C value is the largest air demand for the machine or equipment that will be using the tank.  If the C value is less than the Cap value, then a secondary tank is not needed.  If the Cap is below the C value, then we can calculate the smallest tank volume that would be needed.  The other value in the equation is the minimum tank pressure.  In most cases, a regulator is used to set the air pressure for the machine or area.  If the specification is 80 PSIG (5.5 bar), then you would use this value as P2.  P1 is the header pressure that will be coming into the secondary tank.  With this collection of information, you can use Equation 1 to calculate the minimum tank volume. 

Equation 1:

V = T * (C – Cap) * (Pa) / (P1-P2)

Where:

V – Volume of receiver tank – Imperial (ft3) or SI (M3)

T – Time interval (minutes)

C – Air demand for system – Imperial (SCFM) or SI (M3/min)

Cap – Supply value of inlet pipe – Imperial (SCFM) or SI (M3/min)

Pa – Absolute atmospheric pressure – Imperial (PSIA) or SI (Bar)

P1 – Header Pressure – Imperial (PSIG) or SI (Bar)

P2 – Regulated Pressure – Imperial (PSIG) or SI (Bar)

In many cases, you can also lengthen the time to refill the secondary receiver by restricting the refill rate with a valve, so that it is more of a constant, but much lower draw on the compressor system. This technique also helps to diminish the impact of the large-use items attached to a customer’s system.

For the customer above, I am still getting more details about their system before we finalize on a solution.  But the important point in utilizing this concept is that we went from a “we don’t have enough compressed air” to a “we can use a better solution with the Super Ion Air Knife” and here’s how.

If you find that your compressed air system needs a boost for your pneumatic process, we may be able to recommend a secondary receiver tank for your system.  EXAIR does offer 60-gallon tanks, model 9500-60, to add to those specific areas.  If you have any questions about using a receiver tank in your application, you can contact an Application Engineer at EXAIR.  We will be happy to help. 

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

Take the Steps: Installing Intermediate Storage

Published on by jasonkirbyLeave a comment

Air compressors depend on electricity to generate compressed air, making it essential to enhance the efficiency of your compressed air system. EXAIR offers six straightforward steps that can assist in lowering electrical expenses, minimizing overhead, and boosting profitability. This blog will focus on the fifth step, which involves the intermediate storage of compressed air close to the point of use.

Intermediate storage plays a vital role in managing pressure variations that can arise during production processes. When materials are transferred from one stage to another, sudden changes in pressure can negatively affect the quality of the product. By incorporating intermediate storage, manufacturers can create a buffer that helps stabilize pressure fluctuations. This stabilization ensures that the materials remain consistent before they move on to the next stage, thereby preserving their quality and integrity. Ultimately, this careful handling supports better overall outcomes in the final product, leading to higher customer satisfaction.

In some cases when only one or a few applications need air sporadically, using a properly sized storage receiver can be very helpful. Placing this storage receiver near the point where air is needed most can improve efficiency. It is essential to include a check valve and metering valve with the storage receiver. The check valve ensures that air does not flow back, while the metering valve controls the rate of refilling which is another strategy for reducing overall load on a compressor.

Receiver tanks play an important role in providing compressed air for tasks that require a lot of air for a short time. By placing these tanks in the right locations, users can ensure a steady supply of air without always depending on the compressor. This setup allows for more efficient operations during peak demand periods. Properly sizing the tanks is crucial, as it ensures they can deliver the right amount of air when needed. Overall, receiver tanks enhance the performance of compressed air systems and help meet varying demands effectively, and with a more consistent result.

Step Five of our Six Steps To Optimizing Your Compressed Air System: Use intermediate storage near the point of use.

EXAIR provides a 60-gallon receiver tank that is ready for immediate use. This tank is designed for applications that require a lot of air for short periods. The model 9500-60 can be placed close to where you need extra compressed air. By having this tank nearby, you can ensure that there is enough air supply when demand increases. This setup helps maintain efficiency and performance in your operations.

If you have any questions about intermediate storage, or you need assistance with any of EXAIR‘s products, please do not hesitate to reach out.

Jason Kirby
Application Engineer
Email: jasonkirby@exair.com
Twitter: @EXAIR_jk