5 Ways to Improve the Air Quality in a Pneumatic System

Hi, my name is Andy Lewis and I’m with Innovative IDM. Today I’m going to talk with you a little bit about your air quality and your pneumatic system. A lot of my customers tend to have issues with debris in their air line, scaling from black iron pipe, water in their air line, leaks, etc.

Pneumatic systems with compressors, primarily reciprocating compressors, cause the most issues. Now, how do you protect your machinery downstream? Your cylinders. Your valves. How do you protect them from having to constantly either replace them or rebuild them?

Well, there’s a couple ways to do it and today I’m going to give you five reasons how you can do it. First off, mainline filtration. Basically, this is going right after the compressor and the whole purpose of it is to get oil and water out of your system.

Now what you’re going to see is generally a larger filter than this with a port size of anywhere between one and three inches. It’s going to be a very large body and it’s going to be able to handle the oil that’s coming through.

Now what’s great about SMC versus its competitors is that the level of microns that they filter down to is much higher than other companies. For example, the average is about 20 micron filtration. SMC’s basic mainline filtration is anywhere between three and five microns. So what you’re receiving from that is better filtration.

Now say for example you don’t have that filtration on your line. Oil and water travels down the line. Alright and say for example it isn’t water yet, it’s still in vapor form because you’re reciprocating compressor is putting air out at 160 degrees Fahrenheit. So you have vapor traveling down your line.

As that vapor gets down the line, it’s going to turn into condensate because it’s hit the dew point and now it’s in droplet form. Your valves, your rubber seal valves, and your cylinders are noticing this water.

What occurs? It takes more air, higher PSI to actually shift that spool or to move that cylinder. Why? Because rubber seals expand when they get wet. So how do you fix that? Well, one way you can do it is by using a filter regulator combo. With that being said, you have your regulator at the top you can actually pop it up, change, put in place, and lock.

You also have your filter. Standard is five micron. Goes all the way down to point zero one micron instrument grade quality. There’s nothing in your system. It’s completely clean dry air. There’s also an AMG. Now this isn’t actually the AMG but about the same size.

It’s a water droplet separator. It takes out 99 percent of all water that’s going to be in your air line and that’s a point of use item. Finally, if you find yourself with the reciprocating compressor instead of the screw type compressor, the air is abnormally or much hotter than the screw type.

With that being said, you’re going to want an after cooler and a refrigerated air dryer coming out of that air line before it hits your other machines.

If you’d like more information on this, please go to our website at InnovativeIDM.com and remember Innovative IDM is the home of the legendary customer experience.