Pneumatic Air Dryer Saved $10,000, Downtime

One of my customers had a challenge with his pneumatic air dryer. The pass-through contaminants were costing him parts, time and money.

His facility had in place Ingersoll Rand air dryers. But the dryers were not properly sized for the application. The result was the dryer was allowing inordinate amounts of water and compressor oil pass through to their machines.

This contamination caused by the mismatched pneumatic air dryer meant the customer had to keep replacing his pneumatic valves and cylinders (approximately $10,000 per year). Not to mention the downtime and labor time required to install the replacement parts. If you’re not sure about how expensive downtime can be, check this out.

My solution was the SMC pneumatic IDU series air dryer (high inlet temperature dryer) and the AFF series filter. What you see in the photo is the amount of water that the new air drying solution removed from the system in a six-hour period, from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. on a hot summer day.

The customer has been running the new SMC pneumatic air dryer set up for a couple of months and his system is running more efficiently. He is now recommending the purchase of another SMC pneumatic dryer set up for an identical compressor on the other end of his facility. This photo is a great example of how a properly matched air drying solution from SMC can solve problems — and money and downtime —  in an industrial pneumatic system. —

Alberto Aguilar helps customers out of the Houston branch of Innovative-IDM. You can contact him at [email protected]