Hello,
Just wondering if anyone is using one of these centrifugal filters and how they like it.
Thanks
Just wondering if anyone is using one of these centrifugal filters and how they like it.
Thanks
That's what I was thinking, but not sure.At the slow flow rates of most non-scuba compressors I doubt much cyclone actions is occurring. Work more like a condensing water trap. Cooling the hot air so that the dew point is lowered.
I have 2 of them, one with my Yong Heng and the other with my GX CS4. It seems to bleed off a substantial amount of moisture in front of my JB Alpha Filter.Yes, fairly popular with Yong Heng owners. Game changer for me. Search, "Yong Heng" in archives as the water coalescing filter is a recurring topic. WM
Thanks Alan! I love all the science involved with this hobby/sport/addiction.I think @BlackICE is probably right about the air flow speed on this, and that @Humdinger has it correct for most applications . . .
You have to remember that when when are talking about obtaining"dry air" by removing "water" we are really dealing with removing two different things: condensed water that is already a liquid, and gaseous water that is a vapor. We can obviously remove all the liquid water, but we can't remove "all" of the water vapor - the goal is to remove enough of it so that the air is well below the dew point defined by the temperatures that we expect our air reservoir to experience.
We can do this by using three basic types of filters:
- Coalescing (remove contaminants by getting them to stick together (coalesce) and drop of out of the airflow - works great for removing water/oil mist in air flow, especially when combined with coolers to reduce the air charge temp and drive more condensation),
- Absorptive (uses physical media to directly capture contaminants, like the tampon type - requires the contaminants to be "big enough" to be captured, thus does not work for vaporized contaminantsas it will not trap individual molecules of gaseous water, which are too small),
- Adsorptive (uses a media to adsorb contaminants directly, such as desiccant or charcoal, that capture gaseous contaminants directly via adsorption).
The other key thing that we can do is change the temperature of the air charge, often done with active chillers - but we typically would use the chillers ahead of whatever "filter" we wanted to use. Advanced shop compressor systems, like for paint shops, will typically use a chiller to drop the air temp well below the usage temperature and then pass the air through a coalescing filter and have dry enough air (because as it warms back up to ambient the dew point drops) without using the other types of filters.
In our typical applications, the coalescing filters also function as a chiller by allowing the air charge to cool down - I think this is the biggest contribution from them, and to aid it, I'd consider running it in bucket of ice water to do even more). But I do not think that a coalescing filter on its own is enough to guarantee dry air - I would want to run an adsorptive media filter after it to be sure, unless I knew the air charge was chilled below reservoir air temperature.
Finally up and running