Compressed air is expensive, and you should treat it that way. Frequent readers of the EXAIR Blog are familiar with our Six Steps to Compressed Air Optimization, and you may have seen these recent installments on Steps 1 and 2:
Six Steps to Optimization: Step 1 – Measure the Air Consumption
Six Steps to Compressed Air Optimization: Step 2 – Find and Fix Leaks
Now, there isn’t a strict order in which you MUST perform these steps, and they’re not all applicable in every air system (looking at you, Step 5: Use Intermediate Storage,) but these are likely the steps that a certified auditor will take, and the order in which they’ll take them. If you’re looking for immediate, quantifiable results, though, Step 3 is a great place to start. Consider:
- A 1/4″ copper tube blow off can consume as much as 33 SCFM when supplied with compressed air at 80psig. It’ll give you a good, strong blow off, for sure. You can crimp the end and get that down to, say, 20 SCFM or so. Or, you can install a Model 1100 Super Air Nozzle with a compression fitting, and drop that to just 14 SCFM.
- If you’re tracking your compressed air usage, you’ll see that replacing just one of them saves you 45,600 Standard Cubic Feet worth of compressed in one 5 day (8 hour a day) work week. That’s $11.40 in air generation cost savings, for a $42 (2020 List Price) investment.
- If you spend time in the space where it’s installed, you’ll notice a dramatic improvement in the noise situation. That sound level from the copper tube is likely over 100 dBA; the Super Air Nozzle’s is only 74 dBA.
- Drilled pipes are another common method to create a blow off. They’re easy & cheap, but loud & expensive to operate.
- A pipe drilled with 1/8″ holes and supplied @80psig will consume 13 SCFM per hole, and the holes are typically drilled on 1/2″ centers.
- An EXAIR Super Air Knife consumes only 2.9 SCFM per inch of length, and because it’s an engineered product, it’s a LOT quieter as well. Drilled pipes are, essentially, open ended blow offs just like the copper tube mentioned above. When you let compressed air out of a hole like that, all the potential energy of the pressure is converted to force…and noise.
- Drilled pipes are among the worst offenders; almost always well in excess of 100 dBA. Super Air Knives generate a sound level of only 69 dBA with 80psig compressed air supply. They are, in fact, the quietest compressed air blowing product on the market today.
These aren’t just theoretical “for instances” either – the data, and the photos above, come from actual Case Studies we’ve performed with real live users of our products. You can find them here, and here (registration required.)
These are two examples of EXAIR product users who only used Step 3 of our Six Steps, although BOTH of them were already practicing Step 4 (Turn off the compressed air when it isn’t in use)…they had their blow offs supplied through solenoid valves that were wired into the respective machine controls, and the Air Knife user HAD to do Step 6 (Control the air pressure at the point of use) to keep their product from being blown clear off the conveyor..
But we’ll be happy to help you with optimizing your compressed air system using any or all of the Six Steps. Give me a call.
Russ Bowman
Application Engineer
EXAIR Corporation
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