Air Dryer suggestion

I was going to share this two years ago, but I wanted to make sure to test it out first. After two Texas summers (Hot and Humid) while using my Pro table hours upon hours. I am happy to report this thing works as advertised, you don’t need to buy a harbor Frieght refrigerated air dryer. I did post a video on my setup through the Facebook page months ago, but it seems like no one really looked at it. So I will just share this here. Texas made, Texas manufacturing, for the Texas humidity. Performed great…
Enjoy…


3 Likes

How exactly does it work?

It looks like it would save a lot of room vs linear pipe dehydrators.

1 Like

@hazmat446 What kind of compressor are you running?
A “Cut in” PSI of 150 and a “Cut off” PSI of 175 Is quite a high range.

I went down the rabbit hole of looking at this device in the past.

Seem a little bit likely Wizardry at the time so I never went down that path.

Now That I know its working for you I’ll going to look at it more seriously again.

Thank you for sharing your experience!

Here the last trip down the rabbit hole

2 Likes

Yes I bought this non-refrigerated dryer after doing some research… I was looking for a device that would not use electricity. I got to thinking of this after seeing so many pictures of people making these elaborate piping systems all over there garage wall to shed heat off the compressed air and thus condense moisture out.

However myself with a heating and cooling background one thing that stood out to me was that nearly all of these systems people were feeding there improvised wall creation with either a hose from there compressor either smaller or larger than the tubing size of there wall tubing creation. One of these methods work for you… the other will work against you. Lol.

Without getting into the refrigeration aspect of this… how these devices work is by utilizing a PRESSURE DROP from the inlet (compressor output) to the dryer output. As long as there’s a pressure drop from inlet to outlet there will be a natural cooling effect. This cooling effect is the temp difference that causes condensation to form inside the dryer… thus lowering the dew point. Without this pressure drop you have nothing.

Exploring the rabbit hole further… if you fed one of those elaborate piping systems that cover an entire wall with a larger pipe than the pipe of the improvised wall system, you are bottlenecking the airflow… especially at high airflow rates. This bottle neck could actually increase your compressed air temp at this point in the system. So now your improvised wall condenser system has to work that much harder to lower that temp to create condensation.

Back to this device. I installed one in conjunction with a refrigerated unit. As long as there is air flow there is absolutely a reduction in dew point (this is before the refrigerated dryer). I will test this again today and report my dew point reading… but I believe at high flow rate I was getting a dew point reading down into the 30’s!

I don’t have my cnc table in operation yet but as long as I’m seeing a dew point in the 30s I would have no reason to ever turn on my refrigerated dryer. Cause the refrigerated dryer can only achieve a dew point down to freezing (32 deg F)… anything lower the dryer would freeze up. So if a lower DP is needed you have to add in a desiccant system.

1 Like

My shop at my home here in Wisconsin is air conditioned so the RH is typically pretty low. However over the winter when I bring my trailer in and snow melts off I have to set up a floor fan to dry up the floor (I didn’t put in a floor drain). You can definitely feel the high humidity on those occasions! So this is in part why I opted to add in some redundancy of air drying.

Also with help from some of you all we found that the plasma torch wanted a dew point down around -40 deg F per the manufacturer! I have yet to read of anyone here achieving that! Lol! Unless you install a desiccant dryer the best you will ever get (even with a refrigerated dryer) will be about 34 deg F DP. And from what I’ve read here and videos I’ve seen… folks achieving this are quite happy with their plasma cutters performance.

Just checking the performance of my Air Options dryer right now just to add a little more to the discussion.

The ambient air of my shop was at 40 Deg dew point. After running through my Air Options dryer I was measuring a 32.7 deg F dew point.

Keep in mind this is with maintaining adequate pressure drop across the Air Options system. If yur using more Air than your compressor can maintain the pressure drop of then the end performance will be reduced. If yur not using hardly any Air at all across the Air Options system the performance will not be there either.

I would add too that my compressor has not been being used much so the tank is cold. That being said there’s some natural dehumidifing tanking place right in the compressor storage tank. Hence why I always purge water from it.

If yur using compressor Air all day long that tank is going to warm up and you will rely on more drying from the air solutions system.

I am running a 80 gallon, 2 stage Kobalt 5HP, I will post a video here in this link for you to see my set up. For the past three years I been trying to avoid buying a refrigerated air dryer, I refused to make an entire wall of copper to dry the air. Give me a few hours so I can get to the shop and record it

2 Likes

I have a Ingersoll Rand D144 refrigerator dryer connected to a SSR
UP6 screw machine. The refrigerator dryer gets the dew point to almost zero.
Harbor freight has a refrigerator type dryer that is less than $500 dollars with a 21 cfm flow rate.
I know that 100’ of 3/4 copper and fitting will be real close to the units price. https://www.harborfreight.com/compressed-air-dryer-40211.html

Here is the video I posted just now on Facebook Langmuir support page of my set up…

https://m.facebook.com/groups/921396168061150/permalink/1782691268598298/

Just marking my place so I can remember where I found this

If you click the three dots at the end of the message you’d like to remember you can bookmark it (& then later go back to your bookmarks to find it again).

The icon all the way on the right, just before the arrow & Reply, after clicking the 3 dots (. . .) is the bookmark function.

image

3 Likes

Hey hazz, can you load your vid to YouTube? I don’t do fakebook, or(meta)…

3 Likes

I was going to ask the same thing.

I have never had a Facebook account myself.

I looked into those before I got the HF dryer. There are some videos out there on how to make your own. The reason I didn’t go with it was because I read about them actually freezing up. At that point you have to wait for it to thaw. May not be an issue in hot climate but I think it would be in a mild to cold one. That’s just from reading and not from personal experience. I think there is a reason why you don’t see them more.

Air driers don’t operate below 33°. If they are freezing up, it’s due to a Freon loss or mechanical problem. My drier is a Ingersoll Rand but has ever froze up one time in 5 yrs. I understand that an Ingersoll Rand is not a Harbour freight, but they do have warranty on them.

I was referring to the tube type in the OP. Even their website says “ice cold” as the air moves from one chamber to the other.

If I click on that link, it opens a Facebook page stating it’s a private group and that I should make a Facebook account.

This said, it seems to me a device like this condenses water by a pressure drop inside its chamber. Reason why it needs a relatively high input pressure (150-170PSI) that is typically achieved only by dual stage compressors. By setting the cutoff at 150PSI the compressor will cycle more often that is not exactly what I like (ideally, i like the compressor not to kick in while I’m cutting).

Is this device installed before or after the compressor’s tank? I really like to feed already dry air into the tank.

As it usually happens, often for best results it’s better to have multiple devices in series to gradually condition compressed air to better and better specifications. This device seems like it could be a very convenient first stage. How much does it cost? The electricity used by a refrigerated air dryer is so minimal that it’s typically not a concern; so a lot boils down to convenience and price.

I don’t think you need a Instagram account to view a video, if yall are still having issues please let me know and I will create an account and upload it to YouTube

1 Like

Thank you for vid.

Hey thanks I can see the video now; however you don’t really show this particular condenser too much :grinning: is it mounted at the output of the tank, before the three stage?