Compressed Air Best Practices - March 2008 - (Page 38)

| 03/08 Compressed Air Industry FOOD PROCESSING | HELPING PEOPLE AT SOLBERG Just as important is the fact that intake air filtration prolongs the life of air compressors, blowers and vacuum pumps. It keeps abrasive and damaging particles (present in the ambient air) from entering the equipment. These contaminants will cause wear in the compression areas and breakdown lubricating oils. Equipment has to be continually rebuilt if it does not have the appropriate pre-filtration of incoming ambient air. This is particularly critical in high dust and dirt environments. performed comparable to traditional discharge silencers and were easy to assemble. The result was an off-the-shelf silencer base that can be assembled without cutting, welding, drilling or painting that performed well inside or outside of an enclosure. Packagers simply and quickly connect the components to the frame, saving time and money during the assembly process. Two inch to six inch blower connection sizes are the range we are talking about for the Blower Base Frame (BBF). The US blower market is now trending towards enclosed products, which offer sound attenuation benefits to customers. Please describe your discharge silencers for blowers. This goes back to helping customers who were asking for ways to cut costs on their blower packages without sacrificing quality or performance. When blowers operate, high noise levels can be generated. We launched a compact Filter/Silencer line for the inlet side of blowers in 1992 as an alternative to large, bulky and costly tubular silencers. The compact size and comparable noise attenuation properties allowed blower packagers to save time and money during fabrication and assembly. As noise level requirements became increasingly more stringent, many OEMs and packagers looked to enclosures to meet the new standards (typically less than 85 dba). A properly designed enclosure, together with a discharge silencer, enabled them to meet specifications for their blower packages. Enclosures can be very costly to build on a per square foot basis so our intent was to help the packagers reduce the cost of enclosures by reducing the footprint. We created a base frame/discharge silencer where the enclosure footprint (specifically height and width) was significantly reduced. Additionally, we wanted to ensure they What is ATEX Certification for Inlet Vacuum Filters and Discharge Air/Oil Separation Filters? This is another example of how Solberg helps customers. ATEX stands for Atmosphere Explosive and is a European directive, which is commonly accepted in the U.S. Static discharges within filters are frequently cited as causes for dust explosions that occur in industrial applications. We obtained this certification in 2003 and began offering certified products for use in explosive environments. We were one of the first U.S. companies to offer the ATEX Certification for non-mining applications under Category 2 gases and dusts (zone of use 1, 2, 21 and 22). We have had a lot of success with this in the power generation industry with this product cert. The designs center on the requirement to eliminate the creation of any static charges in the filter which could cause an explosion where explosive gases/materials are present. The filter housings are built with conductive materials and include carbon-impregnated gaskets and o-rings, which are conductive ensuring that a static charge is dissipated. The housings also have grounding terminals and the filter elements use special media. All housings and elements are individually tested for electrical continuity and conductivity. What are the benefits of the new “See-Through” Housings for vacuum intake filters? This is a big deal. The product line emerged from a customer request in the woodworking industry. Furniture plants in the Southeast use vacuum pumps to hold down the wood on the CNC router tables. Vacuum holds the board in place while a machine tool routes a design into the wood. As you can imagine, this process creates large amounts of sawdust and it is critical to keep this dust out of the vacuum equipment. Our customer The Blower Base Frame Sound Attenuation Package 38 www.airbestpractices.com http://www.airbestpractices.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Compressed Air Best Practices - March 2008

Compressed Air Best Practices - March 2008 Contents From the Editor Utility-Air News The Compressed Air Audit of the Month: Saving Energy with Blowers in Canada Do You Provide World-Class Service? Managing Rotary Screw Air Compressors at Midwest Bakery The Difference Between Acfm and Scfm for Proper Vacuum Sizing Best Practices — Multi-Module Process Air Dryers The Vacuum Formation Process in Building Compressed Air Filter Elements Solberg Manufacturing Real World Best Practices: Measuring Pressure Dewpoint in a Compressed Air System Resources for Energy Engineers: Training Calendar & Product Picks Wall Street Watch Advertiser Index Job Market

Compressed Air Best Practices - March 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.