Shop compressors and filters/air dryers

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flymolo

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Long Island, New York
Hi,

Can someone walk me through their shop compressor & filter/air dryer setup? I’m using scuba tanks to drive a gbt15/40, and it’s a bit inefficient so I’d like to understand what’s involved to drive my booster off a shop compressor.
 
Something to cool the air like daisy chained tanks or a bunch of copper tubing followed by a dryer. Or buy a refigerated air cooler.
20220806_140845.jpg
 
Compressor makes hot air.
Cool the air, the water falls out of it.
Start with a larger tank. A 60 gallon tank has a lot more surface area than a 20 gallon tank. The surface area is a radiator and lets the air cool and the moisture will condense and settle to the bottom of the tank.
Run a 2-stage compressor. This is more efficient, you can get cooler air delivered to the tank which is less heat rejected and better cooling. Better cooling will better get the moisture out. Interstage cooling is great as well. A post compressor, pre tank set of fins helps as well, but rarely seen on shop compressors.
If you want to really get fancy, there is a mechanical dryer that can be added. It is a refrigeration cycle that makes the air extra cold to further condense even more moisture out of it. It's a room dehumidifier, but the room is a pressure vessel that compressed air coming out of the tank goes through.
Then there is the desiccant dryers (as shown above) that further remove moisture. I'm in Arizona and have a nice 2-stage big tank compressor and can get by with a small version of the desiccant dryer.
The desiccant can often be renewed several times (check the version you get) by baking it in an oven at about 250° to drive out the moisture it accumulated.
Another trick is to run the compressor higher than you need and regulate down. I run my compressor at about 175PSI and it helps squeeze out a little more water than running it at your desired drive pressure.
Final if you really want to get fancy, a good filter. Motorguard is the one. Nothing else compares. Very good filtering and high flow. Most of the combo filter/regulator things just filter chunks. I run one on my Plasma and 20 years later still on the original filter.
 
Thank you, that is extremely helpful. What sort of desiccant dryer should I be looking for? I noticed a big variation in prices but I’m not sure why that is.
 

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