Tag: spray ring

6 Steps to get the most out of your Compressed Air System: Engineered Products

Published on by Jordan T ShouseLeave a comment

If you’re reading the EXAIR Blog, you’re probably well aware that compressed air is the most expensive utility in an industrial environment. The average cost to generate 1000 Standard Cubic Feet of compressed air is $0.25. If you’re familiar with how much air you use on a daily basis, you’ll understand just how quickly that adds up.

To make matters worse, many compressed air systems waste significant amounts of compressed air just through leaks. According to the Compressed Air Challenge, a typical plant that has not been well maintained will likely have a leak rate of approximately 20%!! Good luck explaining to your finance department that you’re carelessly wasting 20% of the most expensive utility.

The six steps to optimizing your compressed air system is something we cover a fair amount on this blog. And there is a real reason for that. Yes, we sell compressed air products. But we are also aware compressed air costs money to generate, so using this source responsibly is very important.

This is where the 6 steps come into play, but today we are just covering Step 3. Which is upgrading your blow off, cooling and drying operations using engineered compressed air products. (If you want to read about the other 5 steps, check them out here, Step #1, Step #2, Step #4, Step #5, Step #6)

I compare step three to replacing your house windows. We recently got some prices to replace our windows, but along with that comes the cost savings we expect to get as they are better designed now than in the 1990ies to retain your temperature inside. Thus reducing the cost to cool and heat your home.

Similar to my “upgrade” to new windows, upgrading blow offs, cooling and drying operations using engineered compressed air products is Step 3 in EXAIR’s Six Steps To Optimizing Your Compressed Air System. We’ve assigned an order to these steps in accordance with basic good engineering practice & protocol, but it’s not necessary to follow them in any particular order. In fact, all six steps really don’t apply to every single compressed air system.

Step 3 does apply to most systems, though. I spent a fair amount of time in all sorts of industrial facilities in my previous roles, and almost all the time, regardless of the industry or the size of the facility, the maintenance and production part of the facility used air guns. However, I don’t recall ever seeing an engineered nozzle on one before I came to EXAIR. Since then, I’ve worked with a bunch of users to dramatically reduce compressed air consumption by replacing their cheap and inefficient air guns with EXAIR Safety Air Guns, or by retrofitting EXAIR Super Air Nozzles onto their existing air guns. We actually carry adapters to fit our Super Air Nozzles to a number of readily commercially available air guns for that very purpose.

In addition to air guns & nozzles, our Air Knives have a long history of replacing drilled pipes & pipe manifolds with inefficient nozzles used to make a curtain of air flow. The following chart details the savings you can get from the use of a 24″ Super Air Knife instead of similar devices for a 24″ wide air curtain:

Even though an electric powered blower will use less electricity than the amount of electricity an air compressor uses to supply an engineered product like the Super Air Knife, the maintenance costs make the total cost of ownership eclipse that of the engineered Air Knife.

Our Case Study Library documents many real-world situations where customers worked with us to gather & publish “before/after” documentation, proving the benefits of Step 3. I encourage you to check those out, and if you think you might have an opportunity to do a Case Study with us, we offer discounts or credit for that…give me a call.

Jordan Shouse
Application Engineer

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Engineered 360° Blowoff for Wire, Cable, Hose, and Tube

Published on by Tyler Daniel1 Comment

The homemade solution is not always the best one (unless we’re talking about food….). When it comes to homemade blowoff devices, this is certainly always the case. The benefit of using an engineered product vs a homemade one comes down to performance, plain and simple.

When it comes to the Super Air Wipe, when compared to block-style or homemade wipes, the engineered product is always going to be the best solution. They’re designed specifically to operate more efficiently (and safely) than what your maintenance guy has rigged up to use with common components from the facility.

While it may be cheaper up front, it’s certainly not the most efficient in terms of operating costs and could also pose safety issues for your operators nearby. Take the example of an LED lightbulb vs an incandescent one. The LED bulb is going to cost more upfront, but will use less energy to operate AND have a longer overall lifespan than the incandescent bulb. Over time, the LED bulb will save you more than the initial purchase price in electrical costs. Many are often brighter too!

The same can be said when comparing EXAIR’s Super Air Wipe to homemade or what we often refer to as “block-style” wipes. This was the case with a recent company that produces a variety of different sizes of cable and wire. After an internal evaluation of their compressed air usage, they identified several of these throughout many processes in the facility that were consuming too much compressed air and leading to pressure drops in other areas of the plant. Not to mention, they were extremely loud! This required everyone in that part of the facility to constantly wear hearing protection when production was running.

With the sizes they were running most of the time (7-12mm), it made sense to offer our Model 2401 1” Super Air Wipe. After implementation, low pressure alarms in their other processes had stopped and they were able to operate without any further issues. The sound level throughout the facility was also significantly reduced, allowing operators to work without the need for additional hearing protection if they wished. We had reduced the sound level to 80 dBA, well within the safe standard for maximum allowable noise exposure as outlined by OSHA 1910.95(a). With the Super Air Wipe in place, they were able to save on compressed air, increase productivity due to the elimination of low-pressure alarms, and were able to improve the safety of the process for their operators. Not bad for a day’s work!

The Super Air Wipe provides a uniform 360° laminar airflow for blowing off, drying, cleaning, and cooling a wide variety of pipe, cable, extruded shapes, hose, and wire. Its split design allows it to be easily clamped around the surface of the material without having to “feed” the material through. If you’re processing any type of hose, wire, or extruded shapes that could benefit from installing a Super Air Wipe give us a call. With all sizes shipping from stock on an order received by 2:00 pm ET we can have one to you as early as tomorrow!

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

Why Do We Guarantee?

Published on by Al WooffittLeave a comment

We hear about all kinds of applications when working with customers. For many of them, there is an obvious solution. Your electrical panel is overheating – an EXAIR Cabinet Cooler is what you are looking for. If you’re experiencing static on an assembly line – a Gen4 static elimination product is what you need. If you’re trying to blowoff excess water from an extruded pipe, then a Super Air Wipe is the right solution.

There are many applications however, where the solution isn’t as obvious. We know that our products can help, but with the sheer number of variables there isn’t a way to plug everything into a formula and say that this will be the outcome. The end result needs to be found through testing. This is where EXAIR’s 30-day unconditional guarantee comes in. All of our stock, catalog products come with this guarantee. After purchasing one of these products, you have a month to put it through its paces; adjust the angle, adjust the operating pressure, swap out shims. If you are able to find the right conditions to solve your problem, then great! If not, we’ll take it back and issue full credit! You’re only responsible for the shipping to get it back to us.

Line Vac test

A popular application where testing is essential is with our Line Vacs. There are multiple variables at play: the bulk density of the material, the size of the material, is it abrasive?, the rate of conveyance desired, the distance needed to convey – both vertical and horizontal. We’re pretty good at getting you in the ballpark of which model will work best using the data we’ve found from our controlled in-house testing. But ultimately, to know exactly how our Line Vac will perform with your material, it needs to be hooked up. When you purchase from us, you have 30 days to do that risk-free.

At EXAIR, we want to ensure you are getting the best possible solution. Our 30-day unconditional guarantee is one way that we make that a reality. If you would like to discuss how our products can help with your application, give us a call!

Al Wooffitt
Application Engineer

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Daniel Bernoulli and His Effect on EXAIR Products

Published on by Al WooffittLeave a comment

Daniel Bernoulli was born on February 8, 1700, in Groningen in the Netherlands. He is the son of Mathematician Johann Bernoulli, who was an early developer of Calculus. Daniel took an interest in mathematics when he was just 7 years old. Although his father tried to dissuade him from focusing on mathematics due to the limited financial gain, Johann did tutor his son in calculus and theories of kinetic energy.

Daniel continued to show promise, attending Basel University at the age of 13, where he studied logic and philosophy. By the time he was 15 years old, he had completed his bachelor’s degree, and earned his master’s degree a year later. At the age of 23, he moved to Venice, Italy to learn medicine, but he couldn’t get away from mathematics, becoming a professor of a university in Venice a year later.

In 1738, Bernoulli published the book Hydrodynamica, where he first explained what we know as Bernoulli’s Principle. This is of particular interest to us at EXAIR, as many of our products operate off of this principle. It states that an increase in the speed of a fluid occurs simultaneously with a decrease in pressure. This is derived from the conservation of energy, where an increase in kinetic energy (speed) requires a corresponding reduction in potential energy (pressure).

When compressed air exits the precise slotted nozzle of our Super Air Knife, this induces a low pressure area, which speeds up and draws in ambient air. This air entrainment (at a ratio of 40:1) is what makes our Super Air Knives so efficient. This same effect can be witnessed with our Super Air Amplifiers, Super Air Nozzles, Super Air Wipes, as well as many other products.

The high speed of the air exiting the (left to right) the Air Wipe, Super Air Knife, Super Air Nozzle, and Air Amplifier creates a low pressure (just like Daniel Bernoulli said) that causes entrainment of an enormous amount of air from the surrounding environment.  This maximizes flow while minimizing consumption of your compressed air.

If you would like to discuss your application, and how the Bernoulli Principle may be beneficial, feel free to give us a call!

Al Wooffitt
Application Engineer

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