This may have been discussed before? Gx2 unscrew the handle/ intake. Shove the filter to the bottom. Fill with color indicating silica gel beads. Seems to work, can't hurt!
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Gx 2 dryer
- Thread starter Gungadoug
- Start date
Suppose it depends on your location. Mine just starting to turn color after about 1 hour use! Anyhow, can't hurt, right?
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then you have to dry the beads in your oven ? i would have enough beads to fill multi times ?
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I bought these on the internet, less than $20 iirc for about a half gallon. Takes maybe 1/8 cup? I just microwave them in a cup for 10 minutes on thaw. Let em cool then dump em back in. Not as good as a post compression dryer, but it's cheap and seems to help.
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Seems to be a lot of back and forth on this idea. Many say drying on the intake side is nearly useless and some claim the opposite. Leads me to at least believe whatever is on the output side is much more important.
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How would removing the moisture before compression be useless? The less water the incoming air has in it, the less water will precipitate out under heat and pressure.
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I think the point of the argument against is that the air moves so fast that the moisture removal is ineffective.
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Depends on the compressor, eh? With an Omega or CS4, I would imagine that m0isture removal. I've tried it, and my beads turned color in one fill (though it was a low volume cartridge; if I ever decided to set up a viable pre-filter, it will be at least 4 feet, maybe 6, of 1.2-2" PVC pipe.
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One big thing to understand is that "drying" air is not about removing condensed water (like what comes out when one vent the traps in a compressor), but it means removing the water vapor that has not condensed out into liquid. It is important to do this on air that comes out of a compressor, before it goes into a reservoir, because that air charge coming out of a compressor is always going to be hotter than ambient temperature - thus it will carry water vapor in it that will condense out into liquid water after it cools down to ambient. Just trapping the liquid water is not enough.
That leads to the reason for why drying after compression is easier than before for most compressor situations - the act of compression will drive well over 90% (potentially as much as 99%) of the water vapor to condense into liquid water, leaving only a few percent of the water vapor that was in the original air charge to be dried by a typical desiccant filter. It's not that drying before compression is ineffective - it is that it takes a lot more desiccant to do it right. @F6Hawk is correct in his approach - once the water vapor is removed, it is gone. One can fully "dry" the air we compress before compression just as effectively as after compression provided it is done correctly. One can choose the way they want to go, but some active desiccant drying is approriate either way - just be sure to do it correctly (mostly meaning to achieve fully dry air, safely).
There are tradeoffs through. Dry it before compression and one has to use a lot of desiccant in an appropriately sized filter to insure the air is fully dried, and it will likely need frequent regeneration or replacement. Dry it after compression and much less desiccant is needed (and thus the filter can be smaller), but the filter housing has to withstand the full pressure involved, and the compressed air that fills the filter (and the time and energy to compress it) is lost as it does not make it into the reservoir.
Personally, I use a trusty old Shoebox compressor, and since that is fed by air from a shop compressor I dry it after the shop compressor but before the Shoebox - the first stage of compression in the shop unit removes almost 90% of the water via compression induced condensation, leaving only about 10% of it for the desiccant before the Shoebox to handle. I do no "drying" after compression because the air is already sufficiently dry leaving nothing further to be gained with another step.
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