Air-Filtration

How Important is Air Filtration for an Air Compressor?

Air filtration is an essential compressed air preparation so it is important to have a regular maintenance schedule for your air line installation.

 

The quality of the air we breathe these days has gone so bad that respiratory diseases, due to exposure to air pollution, have become a global health concern. Outdoor pollutants come from land/air/sea transportation, agriculture, construction, industrial plant emissions, and natural hazards like volcanic eruptions and wildfires. There are also indoor pollutants that come from homes and offices such as air conditioning, heating, lighting, paints, office equipment, generators, machinery, radiators, etc.

 

What if you work for one of these industries which produces massive amounts of pollutants? An average person inhales 7 to 8 liters of air per minute or 3,840 liters of air in a typical 8-hour job. Imagine how much dirt gets into your body a day!

 

That is where the value of air filtration comes in.

Air Filtration is the process of cleaning the air that gets into your heating and cooling system, by removing airborne pollutants through its filters, and releasing the filtered clean air back to your homes and offices. For manufacturing plants and other industries, air filtration is the process of sifting dirt from the air before it gets through the air compressors. Simply put, the process makes polluted air clean for the people to breathe and for the compressors to use.

 

How important is it to the air compressor?

Air compressors are very powerful equipment that work by compressing ambient air into smaller size and volume and forcing this air into a pressurized tank. The pressurized air, when released from the tank, can then be used to run a variety of pneumatic tools, machinery, and equipment. Air compression is an amazing process of taking a natural resource (air) from the atmosphere and transforming it into energy to power tools as small as a nailing gun to big machinery as a theme park ride! However, this powerhouse equipment cannot function at its best without the equally important process of filtration.

 

Dust and other pollutants are the enemies of compressors. They cause wear and tear to the compressors’ parts so these make air filtration a very critical initial step in the air compressing process. The filtration starts at the beginning of the process, as the ambient air is captured from the atmosphere by the compressor because it is important that only clean air gets through the compressor system. The dirt captured on the inlet filters, if left unchecked and unmanaged, will cause reduced output capacity of the compressors, increased energy consumption, and worse, cause your compressors to overheat.

 

Since air filtration is an essential compressed air preparation so it is important to have a regular maintenance schedule for your air line installation. This is to avoid disruption of your operations due to breakdown of compressors caused by swelling seals, premature wear and tear of valves, and other parts.

 

Briefly, air filtration is like us wearing masks to stop viruses and other bacteria from getting into our system, thus preventing us from getting diseases that can impair our bodies.

 

If you are experiencing impaired air compressor performance, frequent unscheduled downtimes, and high energy cost, it might just be a compressor hiccup. Why don’t you allow our trained specialists to help you find out? Call us and we will schedule a visit!