Engineered super air nozzles slash energy usage

Most plants use compressed air for blow-off, cooling, and drying. Unfortunately, the way they go about using air can be extremely primitive, using such things as crimped copper tubing or drilled pipes. Why? Those things are inexpensive. Even if the commercial air nozzles are available from industrial suppliers or distributors, that doesn’t make them good. Like those homemade devices, they can prove to be loud and use a lot of compressed air.

Finding sources of air abuse

Where do you start? An easy way to spot the ‘air abusers’ is to use hearing protection and walk through the plant, listening for the noisy compressed air hiss. A sound level meter showing a reading of 85dBA or above when measured at 0.9m away from the noisy air source is dangerous and is sure to use too much air. The reality is that you don’t need the meter to tell you that. If it is extremely loud, you aren’t using an engineered air product to conserve compressed air and suppress noise.

When air blasts out of a drilled pipe, hole or crimped tube, the air amplification is minimal (three parts room air to every one part compressed air). Sharp edges on the hole or pipe creates wind shear and dramatically increases the noise level. Expensive fines can result if an employee is exposed to 85dBA or above for an eight-hour work day, due to potential hearing loss (see OSHA standard 29 CFR 1910.95[a]). If the hole, open pipe, or copper tube has an outlet pressure greater than 30 PSIG, a worker can be seriously injured or killed if they block the opening with a hand or other body part where air enters the bloodstream (see OSHA standard CFR 1910.242(b).

High force can be obtained without the high air consumption and noise. Upgrading to engineered Super Air Nozzles and Super Air Knives is the solution. They are aerodynamic and pull in up to 40 parts of room air to one part compressed air. They do it in such a way that they are surprisingly quiet and are available in a variety of configurations, including Safety Air Guns that are comfortable for periods of extended use.

What are the cost savings?

What is the cost of compressed air? On a 24-hour production line, reducing average compressed air use by even one standard cubic foot per minute (29.3 standard litres per minute) can result in savings of over $130 per year, while replacing open tubing or a commercial nozzle with an engineered nozzle can reduce air use by 50-70%.

Consider these recent savings:

• A manufacturer of galvanized, roll-formed metals used two 1/8 NPT crimped pipes to blow the coolant off extrusions. The air consumption was reduced from 120 standard cubic feet per minute (3,396 standard litres per minute) to 44 standard cubic feet per minute (1,246 standard litres per minute) by installing two of Exair’s Model 1122 52mm flat super air nozzles for air savings of 63%. The sound level dropped from 90dBA to 80dBA.
• A bakery used capped-off schedule 40 pipe with a 3.6mm hole in each cap to eject rolls out of baking pans. They installed ten Model 1100 6.4mm FNPT Super Air Nozzles that gave them savings of eight standard cubic feet per minute per hole, for a total saving of 80 standard cubic feet per minute (2,264 standard litres per minute). They saved $1.54 per hour, $12.32 per eight-hour shift, and $9,240.00 per year (6,000 hours).

Configurations and materials

When a curtain of air is best suited to the application, the Super Air Knife is the low-cost choice. It provides a laminar, uniform airflow and high 40:1 air amplification. Like the Super Air Nozzles, it is available in a number of configurations and materials including aluminium, stainless steel, and PVDF. Super Air Knife applications include:

• Part drying after wash.
• Sheet cleaning in strip mills.
• Conveyor cleaning.
• Part or component cooling.
• Web drying or cleaning.
• Environmental separation.
• Pre-paint blow-off.
• Bag opening/filling operations.
• Scrap removal on converting operations.

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