SMC Best Practices - Remove Water from Factory Air and Minimize Costly Downtime
Wednesday, August 28, 2019 4:40:18 PM America/New_York
One of the foremost causes of costly downtime and emergency maintenance is not oil or contaminants, which are easily removed with proper filtration, but water vapor and the resulting condensed water that is trapped in factory compressed air.
Machine components will suffer premature wear and parts deterioration from water:
- pneumatic cylinders will have their pre-lubricants washed away, corrode and respond slower
- solenoid valves’ rubber seals will stiffen, become more susceptible to rupturing and leaking
- instrumentation can malfunction even with the presence of a small amount of moisture/water
- air powered tools will likely stick, jam and perform less efficiently
End products are also at risk of suffering from quality deterioration because of water:
- spray painting will be adversely affected by change in color, adherence and finish quality
- industrial ink-jet printers will be adversely affected by change in adherence and finish quality
- blow molding plastic bottles’ viscosity and material consistency could be adversely affect
- gluing / taping adhesiveness of cardboard boxes could be adversely affected
- pharmaceuticals compound mixing and integrity could be adversely affected
- food processing may be contaminated because of micro-organism growth
How does Water Vapor Enter Factory Compressed Air?
Removing Liquefied Water from Factory Compressed Air
The next line of defense for removing the water vapor saturated compressed air is a drip leg. A drip leg is a vertical pipe plumbed at the air drop line (below the horizontal header pipe) to allow for water to be easily and efficiently drained away using the principle of rapid air expansion, or adiabatic expansion, to condensate water vapor into liquefied water.
To broadly summarize adiabatic expansion, temperature is the average heat or kinetic energy of all the particles divided by a given volume of air; if the volume of air is increased through expansion, the heat is divided by a larger volume number, therefore decreasing the air temperature. If the drop in air temperature falls below its dew point, then a condensate will form.
The condensate is then removed by a drain at the bottom of the drip leg which can be automatically or manually drained to avoid overflow of contaminants.
Water separators will use mechanical separation techniques to remove condensed water in bulk from factory air either by directing inlet air into a spiral and using centrifugal force to separate the water out from the compressed air or by passing the inlet air through a special resin filter element with large meshes to trap water particles that will drop down to a collection bowl allowing the compressed air to pass through.
However, the AMG water separator is not designed to remove water vapor or lower dew point which will require a refrigerated air dryer or desiccant dryer.
For more on refrigerated air dryer or desiccant dryer, visit www.smcusa.com or contact Scott Equipment