Drying Air Compressor talk

[morpheusmac]

Hey All,

I'm in the process of setting up lines in my shop and I'm looking for some advice on making a decision when it comes drying compressed air.

I have a 7.5 HP CH compressor mounted in a shed outside of the shop. I'm going to run the line into the shop through the back wall. The compressor has a 3/4" outlet on the tank. The compressor will be used occasionally for painting as well as standard oiled air tools.

Years ago I picked up a used 220V Wilkerson Dry-Pak Industrial Gas Dryer with a ⅜” inlet/outlet (125 psi max):

I also picked up a Bullard Type 41A Air Purifier with a 1” inlet/outlet (125 PSI max):

Questions: Should I use either of these in my airline setup? Would I still need to build a long after-cooler setup to reduce water from contaminating the system if I used the Wilkerson air dryer?

Thanks!

 

[Jswain]

That Bullard filter looks like it's for breathing air so I'm assuming replacement cartridges are going to be expensive so I would probably install something cheaper upstream to get the bulk of it out.

If you're going to do quite a bit of painting I would do the aftercooler with an auto drain coming right out of it, filter regulator & then the Bullard filter. If the gas dryer is usable then id put it between the filter/regulator and the Bullard filter

 

[engineer2]

That type of dryer will give you a very low dewpoint. But...
You can't let oil vapor get into the desiccant. You need a coalescing filter before the dryer.
You can cycle it with the compressor, but a regenerative dryer works best if it is run continuously.
Install it in an area that stays above freezing.
https://weiss-na.com/wp-content/uploads/IB-160-Rev-B-Dry-Pak.pdf

 

[muduck18]

Unfortunately I can’t answer your questions. But I can show you what I did.

In the YouTube video linked below I installed my compressor in the shed. And ran an underground pipe to the shop and the. Installed a separator.
Then after the separator I put an Eastwood filter drier that I can add a desiccant drier to if I need.
So far I have only gotten water out of the first drain. All the rest have no moisture come out.

This doesn’t mean there isn’t any moisture in the air at the tool, just that I’ve separated anything that would condense at room temperature.
If you need a specific dryness I don’t know how to tell or what you’d need.
I just mainly do air tools and a plasma cutter. I will sometime so some basic painting but it’s not what I normally use it for.

This is the water from the first leg from a couple weeks of very light use I forget to empty it every time I use it because I use it so infrequently sometimes.

 

[Fixnair]

That dryer looks like a dual tower regenerative dryer. It will need a considerable amount of purge air from your compressor constantly to dry the tower that is offline. be aware of this to be sure you have enough of a compressor to keep up with the demand