Desiccant drier for air compressor INTAKE?

[SnowDrifter]

I'm wondering... Would it be of any benefit to install an desiccant drier to the intake of the compressor to reduce moisture before it enters the system?


I'm not terribly concerned about desiccant usage, I dry mine out in the oven. Just wondering how much of a benefit there would be

 

[thieltech]

i doubt theres much or the big air compressor companys would be doing it .

 

[CNGsaves]

Depends on WHERE you're located . . . . Phoenix would be not needed (low/no humidity),
. . . . . while humid warm city like Houston, TX or gulf city would be helpful.

Update GJ Profile with City/State/Country.

What is runtime of compressor that you're considering this on ?? Do you have continuous use for say sand blasting ?? Compressor size ??

For natural gas compression, it IS common to put desiccant dryer inline on the source supply to eliminate as much moisture as possible.

 

[thieltech]

Thats simply not going to work well. As you run the pre dried air through the compressor your going to increase the dew point massively. Its now compressed into less than a 1/4 of the volume. Hence the dew will be nothing like as low as you can get on the output side of the compressor. Air dried to say a dew point of 15 Celsius at 120psi is a lot dryer than incoming air dried to the same dew point. More so when there uncompressed and the air chills one won't deposit its moisture the other likely will.

Add in increasing the suction pressure on the input to a compressor will have a marked reduction on its output capacity and is a real bad idea in most circumstances at the scales we deal with. Ultra large compressors and pretreatment is a diffrent ball game. But even then you have to still dry - filter post compression if you want really dry air.

( Adama wrote this on practical machinist )