Tag: saving

Why Engineered Air Nozzles Outperform Open Pipes (And Cut Air Use by Up to 70%)

Published on by Jordan T ShouseLeave a comment

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 Nozzles are 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.

Jordan Shouse, CCASS

Application Engineer / Sales Operations Engineer

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Environmental Impacts: Be Efficient. 

Published on by John BallLeave a comment

Since the establishment of EXAIR in 1983, customer satisfaction has always been the cornerstone of our business model.   This may seem like common practice, but here at EXAIR, we like to go the extra mile.  We have over a 99.9% on-time delivery with thousands of products in stock.  We offer free expert technical help from our Application Engineers, as well as within EXAIR Blog writings and application search library.  We have an Efficiency Lab to report on comparison results with safety and compressed air saving.  We also offer a 30-day unconditional guarantee on our cataloged products for you to try.   So, what more can EXAIR do for you?

Compressors use large amounts of electricity to produce compressed air and are considered the fourth utility in most manufacturing plants.  EXAIR manufactures engineered products that can save compressed air and increase energy savings.  With that, EXAIR was able to partner with Energy Star.  “Energy Star is a government-backed symbol of energy efficiency, helping to save money and to protect the environment through energy-efficient products and practices.” This commitment by EXAIR to reducing energy, increasing safety for workers, and protecting the environment for future generations are effective ways to sustain a business value.

When large amounts of energy can be saved, electricity-producing companies take notice.  Electrical suppliers started a rebate program for using engineered nozzles in their facilities.  Similar to other energy-saving rebates, like LED light bulbs and high-efficiency furnaces, the EXAIR engineered nozzles now fall into that same category.  If your electrical provider supports this program, the total cost to purchase and implement the EXAIR Super Air Nozzles is greatly reduced.  Even if a rebate program has not yet been implemented in your area, the idea of saving energy makes it very practical and environmentally sound.

The NC Clean Energy Technology Center created a website to consolidate all the electrical companies that offer rebates for efficient products and programs.  The website is www.dsireusa.org.  “DSIRE is the most comprehensive source of information on incentives and policies that support renewable and energy efficiency in the United States.”  EXAIR engineered products fall into this category, so if a rebate can be applied to our products, it will be located on that site.

Another energy-saving tip from Energy Star refers to waste from leaks.  They recommend a leak prevention program to help improve energy savings.  As part of that program, EXAIR does offer an Ultrasonic Leak Detector.  To tell a common success story about the Ultrasonic Leak Detector, an EXAIR customer had a 50-horsepower air compressor.  It started to overwork, overheat, and occasionally shut down.  They thought that they would need to buy a larger air compressor to keep the plant running.  In discussing that a company without a leak prevention program could have as much as 30% waste, they decided to purchase an Ultrasonic Leak Detector.  They checked every fitting and connection in the facility.  When they finished checking the compressed air system, they found a total of 91 leaks.  Not only did this save on energy waste, but it also saved money by fixing the leaks and not expanding the capital expenses in the company.

With EXAIR being backed by Energy Star, EPA, and rebate programs, together, we can save energy, improve the environment, and reduce compressed air usage.  If you would like to discuss how EXAIR can work for you, you can contact an EXAIR Application Engineer.

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

Photo: Lightbulb by TheDigitalArtist.  Pixabay Content License

How to Save Money on Compressed Air

Published on by codybiehleLeave a comment

Compressed air can be one of the more expensive utilities to use in a facility, but a compressed air system is full of simple opportunities to increase efficiency and minimize the cost. Much like how you can take multiple steps to save electricity at your house there a few simple steps you can take to save your compressed air. These steps include finding and repairing leaks, compressor maintenance, minimizing pressure at the point of use, and turning the compressed air off when not in use. Implementing these steps and using the right tools to achieve them can lead to significant dollar savings – in fact our website case studies, other blog articles and catalog are filled with example after example of air (and dollar) savings success! And let’s be honest here, who doesn’t like saving money.

First off is finding your leaks. Leaks are one of the major wastes of compressed air in a system that could happen. Leaks in a compressed air system can account for wasting 20-30% of a compressors output. These leaks can commonly be found in pipe joints, devices that use the compressed air, quick connect fittings, and storage tanks. All of this compounds to wasting air much like a leaky faucet wastes water – little by little it grows until it simply needs to be addressed. One of the ways to help find leaks in your system is EXAIR’s affordable Ultrasonic Leak Detector. This leak detector uses ultrasonic waves to detect where costly leaks can be found so that they can be patched or fixed.

EXAIR Ultrasonic Leak Detector

Choose efficient end-use products. Engineered air knives, air amplifiers, air nozzles and safety air guns can dramatically outperform (use less air) than commercial air nozzles and in-house solutions such as drilled pipes, open air lines and other creative “fixes”. We have seen some very nice in-house solutions from customers who have put in some significant time and effort, but they all have one thing in common – they use more air than any of EXAIR’s engineered solutions.

Minimizing your pressure can also save you money by limiting the amount of compressed air that is being used. Pressure and volume go hand and hand, the higher the pressure the higher the volume of air and vice versa. By minimizing the pressure that you are using you are also minimizing the amount of air that is being used which means savings. Each CFM used can be associated with a certain price value so the less you use the more you save. You also cut down on the amount of work the compressor has to do and how often the compressor has to cycle. Pressure can be minimized using one of EXAIR’s Pressure Regulators to cut down on the amount of air being used.

EXAIR’s Pressure Regulators come in 4 different sizes

Turn off the compressed air when it is not in use. Just like how you wouldn’t leave the faucet running or lights on in a room that is not being used, don’t leave your compressed air running (insert bad dad joke). Constantly using compressed air even when not in use will cause the compressor to cycle more often wasting money. Each CFM has a price to it so don’t waste CFM’s blowing it back into the air and doing nothing. This can simply be done by adding one of EXAIR’s ball valve or solenoid valves to turn off when you are done using it. Also, if you want to take it another step farther you can look at using one of EXAIR’s Electronic Flow Controllers (EFC). The EFC uses a photo eye attached to a timer that will open a solenoid valve for a set amount of time when it detects an object within 3’ of the photo eye. This will turn the air on only when your product is in the air path and turn it off during any spaces in between.

EXAIR’s EFC in use

Compressor maintenance is another important step to minimizing the cost of compressed air. Neglected air compressors can cause a lot of issues ranging from expensive repairs to a decreases in efficiency. Wear and tear placed on the motor of an air compressor can cause the compressor to produce less compressed air (SCFM) at the same power consumption. This means you are paying the same amount of money and getting less out of it. Making sure that your compressor or any machine is always running at its optimal performance and should always be a priority for any facility.

There are many different ways to save on compressed air, these are just a few of them. Reducing air use will save money and reduce the demand on your compressor which in turn can prolong the life of your air compressor. If you have questions about how to save on compressed air or any of our engineered Intelligent Compressed Air® Products, feel free to contact EXAIR or any Application Engineer.

Cody Biehle
Application Engineer
EXAIR Corporation
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Tools Of The Trade: The Rotameter

Published on by Brian FarnoLeave a comment

EXAIR’s Free Efficiency Lab

One of the free services we offer to customers here at EXAIR is our Efficiency Lab. In case you are not familiar here is a brief synopsis. Speak with an Application Engineer about your existing compressed air blowoff/point of use product and that you would like to know how much air it consumes. Fill out the brief survey and send the product you use in to our facility. Let us perform tests on calibrated test equipment to determine the force, flow, and noise level. We will then issue you a report that states what the EXAIR model would best be suited (if applicable) as well as how much compressed air you will be able to save. Order the recommendation and start saving money.

To do these evaluations, we have to have calibrated equipment that is reliable and capable of handling vast range of products we may receive in. For this, we could use a Digital Flowmeter, in some cases that is what has to be done due to large flow rates. For the majority of these though we go old school. We utilize a piece of equipment called a rotameter.

A rotameter pairs nicely with a calibrated pressure gauge as well.

The float can be seen with graduated marks for readings. The taper of the chamber is not easily seen with the naked eye.

This is a device that is designed to measure the flow rate of a fluid within a closed tube. The inside diameter of the tube is varied which causes the float within the meter to raise or lower.  They are calibrated for a specific gas at a given pressure and temperature, most are calibrated for atmospheric conditions, 14.7 psi (1.014 Bar). The meter must be mounted vertically and this is not always best suited for industrial environments.

When testing products the compressed air within the meter is pressurized which means we have to correct the reading for the given pressure, if the temperature is outside of the calibration temp then we must also perform that correction. We do this using a table provided by the manufacturer of the meter or by using the calculations shown to get exact values that may be in between the pressures in the table.

Pressure Correction Table

 

This will allow us to then multiply the Correction Factor by the meter reading and calculate our corrected flow for the point of use device at a given operating pressure and temperature.

Temperature correction table

Knowing where the values that are measured and calculated come from add validity to the reports and understanding all of the variables that go into reading like this helps to better validate the cost savings that can be seen.

In a pinch, for a field estimation, we can also use these Correction Factors and determine an approximate consumption rate of a device that has been measured at a pressure such as our cataloged 80 psig (5.5 Bar). This can often be done on the fly to help determine the flowrates currently on a system. This can be helpful when troubleshooting, giving estimated simple ROIs, and help justify results and reasons for future purchases of engineered solutions.

If you want to discuss the Efficiency Lab or any of the math behind our calculations, contact any Application Engineer, we can all help out.

Brian Farno
Application Engineer
BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF