Keeping Compressed Air Products as Quiet and Energy-Efficient as Possible
February 24, 2017Sponsored content
For a moment, imagine that you are about to bite into a delicious, warm muffin. Did you know that if that muffin was baked inside a factory, a compressed air-operated product played a role in its development?
How? Here’s an example.
An air-knife curtain blow-off system like the Silent X-Stream Air Blade Air Knife from Nex Flow Air Products can blow off the excess sugar from muffins before they enter the oven on a manufacturing belt, in order to avoid burning.
Nex Flow manufactures a plethora of compressed air-operated products just like this with applications you may not have thought about.
Another example of a Nex Flow compressed-air product with a unique application is the company’s X-Stream Air-Blade ionizers, which clean off car bumpers before they are painted.
Among the products that Nex Flow manufactures, customers can find air blow-off products that reduce noise levels, vortex tube technologies for spot cooling, control panel cooling and tool cooling, as well as air-operated conveying products and static-control technology.
When it comes to industrial factories and applications, compressed air can be considered as vital a tool as electricity or water.
If you think about it, compressed air reaches as far back as the beginning of humankind; the first compressed-air products can be considered the human lungs, before even the water wheel leveraged the technology. (A normal human lung can exert upwards of 1.4 psi.)
Compressed-air technology has made strides since a breath out of the lungs, though. Now companies want to make their compressed-air parts as energy-efficient as possible, as well as quiet, while improving overall efficiency.
At Nex Flow, there’s an entire team dedicated to this task, working to constantly improve these products. The researchers work to amplify air flow by improving air nozzles, as well as develop special applications for compressed air that are related to energy reduction, noise control and productivity improvement.
One specific example of the company’s dedication to improvement is its recent release of the Air Mag Nozzle, which uses compressed air for blow-off, cooling and moving. What makes the patent-pending technology unique is that it produces the highest force/cfm of any air nozzle to date—while also reducing noise. In most cases, the Air Mag will be used for heavy-duty parts cleaning and drying, liquid blow-off, and part ejections.
Designing a product of this nature is no easy task. When it comes to compressed air, products have to meet several Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requirements, including keeping the downstream pressure of an air nozzle or opening of a gun or pipe that is used for any cleaning purposes at a pressure level below 30 psi. In addition, the noise level of exhausting air is capable of reaching levels that can result in hearing damage.
Even though there are so many compressed air nozzles on the market—such as some of the parts named here, including air nozzles, air knives, air jets and large air amplifiers—the use of open-jets and tubes is still widespread. This can be detrimental because using these products wastes energy, creates dangerous levels of noise, and is considered unsafe due to exceeding OSHA pressure guidelines such as the ones mentioned above.
For this purpose, Nex Flow’s researchers remain dedicated to creating a constant flow of efficient products that try to avoid hazardous and careless methods.
