How To Make The Ultimate Air Dryer Even Better

[@70ixlr86]

Legit no nonsense build, Ty. Every one has a different take on what or why, but the truth is there are hundreds of ways to achieve a great outcome. Each share on YT is helpful to those seeking a solution of their own. Safety, pressure ratings, pressure drop, and proper joinery, all make for successful out comes. Thanks for the share.

[@BeckTools]

Thanks for the feedback :)

[@G5Hohn]

1” pipe is excellent for low restriction, but not the best choice for cooling effectiveness, which is the stated purpose of a system like this. You want a smaller diameter pipe because it has more surface area for the same volume of air. This puts more air into contact with copper and gets rid of the heat more effectively. That’s why radiators have fins- it’s all about increasing the surface area for heat transfer. Copper is expensive these days and there are far more cost-effective ways to get your air cooler and dryer. The best is the use something designed for cooling- a transmission cooler or other radiator that can handle pressure. If you want to skip a radiator of some sort, then you’d want to stay with smaller diameter piping and run more of it. The obvious trade off here is pressure drop, so you’ll need to determine how much restriction you can live with. This is another reason to use the radiator- way less restriction and pressure drop for the same heat loss. The best way to use smaller diameter piping (IMO) for cooling is to have an inlet and outlet manifold and split the flow across many small pipes (3/8). Put the inlet at the top corner and the outlet at the bottom opposite corner. So you’d flow top left to bottom right or top right to bottom left. Doing it this way solves both the restriction issue (by splitting the flow so many ways) while also slowing the flow down so it can more effectively shed heat. Finally, it also makes the water collection a snap because if you slightly angle the cross tubes downhill, the flow path of all air and water is downhill, making for easy collection of water at a single location.

[@CG24601]

Old video but hope this helps some folks looking to do this, First of all amazing work by Beck's Armory, great idea, great points and awesome dude for sharing his project with the world. I dont want my commentary to seem like I'm taking away from just how cool his set up is, the most important metric to test is if something works, his set up works and he has the results to prove it, I'm just some guy on the internet that sees a way to make things better. Several times its mentioned that larger diameter pipe is better because it provides greater surface area, this is only half true. While it is true that 1 inch pipe has a higher surface area for a given length than say 1/4 inch they also have a much different volume for a given length. Air is a great insulator 0.03 W/(mK) so it is important to have as much air in contact with the copper as possible, so more important than raw surface area is surface area per unit volume. Easy example, surface area of 1 foot of 1 inch copper pipe = 2 pi * r * L = 6.28 * 0.5 * 12 = about 37.7 square inches of copper, that same pipe has a volume of (pi * r^2) * h = (3.14 * 0.5^2)*12 = 9.4 cubic inches of air, 37.7/9.4 = 4.0 sq inch/ cubic inch, so EACH CUBIC INCH OF AIR GETS 4 SQUARE INCHES OF COPPER TO SHED HEAT THROUGH. Lets try the same thing with 1/4 inch copper, surface area = 2 pi * r * L = 6.28 * 0.125 * 12 = about 9.4 square inches of copper, the volume (pi * r^2) * h = (3.14 * 0.125 ^2)*12 = 0.6 cubic inches of air. So in 1/4 inch copper pipe 9.4/0.6 = 15.7 SQUARE INCHES OF COPPER FOR EACH CUBIC INCH OF AIR TO SHED HEAT THROUGH, more than 4 times as much surface area for each cubic inch of air. Smaller diameter pipe provides much more surface area EXPOSURE for the air they contain, they shed heat much more effectively because far less of the air is moving through the center of the pipe, insulated from the copper by the air that surrounds it. Going as narrow as 1/4 inch is probably a little small for the flow for a 60 gallon compressor, but if your particular application prioritizes cool dry air over max cfm it might be worth it. More over the principle holds true regardless, because surface area scales to the second power while volume scales to the third power. Now that we have shown the cooling advantage of smaller diameter copper its worth pointing out the advantages of larger diameter pipe that Beck's Armory has pointed out, the "expansion" within the pipe reducing the velocity of the air, allowing more time for the air to cool in the pipe, and the reduced likelihood of condensed moisture being pushed into the tank via the air flowing through both due to reduced air velocity and less air in contact with the walls (the air can "channel" better in a big pipe). These are definitely valid points but I think there is a way to reap theses advantages without having to give up the surface area/volume advantage of smaller pipe. I would propose the option of parallel condensers, that is make two or more condensers out of the thinner pipe. The cross sectional area of 1 inch pipe is 0.785 square inches, for 1/2 inch pipe its 0.196 square inches, in other words it takes 4 1/2 inch pipes to carry the same amount of fluid at the same velocity as a single 1 inch pipe. A single 1/2 inch pipe is already better at exchanging heat per unit time, but the air traveling through it is going to have a higher velocity therefor spending less time in the pipe overall. Newtons law of cooling tells us that the cooling happens fastest when the temperature difference is greatest, so most of the cooling happens earlier in the condenser rather than later. So we know we want slow air and therefore a lot of pipe cross section, a lot of surface area/unit volume to exchange heat over, therefore a small pipe diameter, and overall length of the system gives less and less results as you get longer. To me the ideal set up is many small pipes, all in parallel, not worrying too much about the length of the run. In other words what most radiators look like, max surface area, lots of little channels. I would propose, say 4 or more 1/2 inch diameter or smaller, each acting as its own condenser, perhaps with a manifold at each end. This optimises the surface area to exchange heat within, while the parallel channels increase the flow rate across the system, meaning the air spends as much time in the condenser as possible (side note this also allows for less concern over line losses/cfm losses because of flow restriction). In this you would spec as much copper surface area as you needed to cool the air to the temp you would like for the moisture loss youre looking for, spec enough pipes of a given diameter to meet a flow rate youre getting from your compressor pump. Finally you then spec the length of pipe run based on your budget, so pick a set up (ex. 8 1/2 inch pipes), a distance, then price it out at your local costs and if its too expensive make it shorter. Essentially we build a system that is as efficient as possible by design and then size it based on budget. The great part about this as well is if you find you need more cooling or run into some extra cash, you dont have to scrap the set up to get more performance. There is no questioning if its worth swapping out all the 1 inch pipe for a longer run of 1/2, just cut the set up in half (middle or end doesnt matter) and add pipe and couplers to increase the total length and performance. The only thing this doesnt address is the problem of water being forced through the pipes. It does solve the air flow rate issue, but not the ability of larger pipes to move more air without sucking water, for this I would suggest using "y" fittings where Becks Armory has used T's, on the horizontal run have a 45 pointing down, then a y fitting set as it looks on the alphabet, that near 180 reverse in direction may act as a cyclonic dust separator or gc mass spec machine, momentum is based on mass (scales to the third power) and wind resistance is based on the surface area (scales to the 2nd power) so heavy stuff just cant make the turn without slowing down and falling out of the airstream. This has been long and I appreciate anyone who read this far, I only have two points left. Number 1, the insulating property of air 0.03 W/mK is proof that there is great value in having air flow past the outside of the pipe for efficient cooling as well. Number 2, the air is cooled to at most ambient temperature, while still under pressure, when it decompresses it will then drop below ambient temp ( gas law and refrigeration cycle) and any moisture that was in the stored air (there will always be some) will be forced to condense. This will build up in the tank, so the lesson, one of these external condensers is great, but you should still drain and check your tank from time to time, compressors are pricy and this can help them last

[@dh66]

Wow Colin that was quite the read. Why do this condenser system for $250 and the labor involved when you can buy two air/water separators for $160 total?

[@fyzxman3293]

Do you have any suggestions of how to build what you suggest? I am not sure I follow some of your reasoning but it seems to fit. Interested in having a system that maintains as much cfm at 90 to 135 psi. Would it not make sense to attach the condenser between the pump and tank? Could a radiator work if it had the valve to purge the moisture? Just wondering.

[@SHarris64]

Great explanation of the engineering and physics involved!! It seems it might be a good idea to shop around at a commercial refrigeration shop and pick up a used condenser unit from a large cooler or freezer. As long as it’s not contaminated it has the parallel runs of smaller pipes, the cooling fins to extract the heat better and may already have fans to help push that air. Thanks for the explanation. 👍🏻

[@CG24601]

@@fyzxman3293 I would start by looking at the size of fittings already on your compressor and use that as a baseline. If you want as much flow as possible you want to make sure no part of your system gets narrower than the fittings coming out of your pump or into your tank. Some compressors and tools I've seen have fittings "stacked" from the factory, so a 3/8ths hole with a 1/4 reducer installed already check your tank and pump just in case and ig your manufacturer has given you a choice go bigger. If you want cfm then best to build your shop and all your quick connects and lines on the biggest bore you can find. This reduces any single point restrictions in flow. So installing 1 inch black iron pipe for shop air is great, but it gets clawed back if you have to push that through 1/4 fittings at the tools. That's just stacking the odds in your favor for max flow, but you were curious about a cooling system. Basically we want the cooling advantage of small pipes but we want to flow as much air as possible, so we need lots of them. Look at the size of your fittings on the tank and pump and then calculate the cross sectional area (surface area of a circle) if you're not a math brain you can look up "cross sectional area of BLANK size pipe" and it should work too. And that's your magic number for building your system, any time you want to go smaller in the pipe size you need to use enough of those smaller pipes to add up to at least the same cross sectional area as the biggest part of your system. So idk what your setup looks like but I'll try and map it onto what becks armory posted, that way we have a point of reference we can both look back at. From the pump head outlet we're gonna make a run to the top of the condenser at the same size as the pump fitting, our magic number from before. Then instead of running an up and down zigzag, I would put a a pipe across horizontally, with T fittings space out pointing down. How many T fittings is based on how small I want to go with the pipe, I want at least enough to have the same total cross sectional area. It's like a river, the width of the river is how much water it can flow, we don't want to narrow the river, but if we want narrow sections of river, we can split it in two or three or four and keep the water moving as long as they all add up to the same width as before. Idk your set up or budget so you have to draw it out and price it for yourself, but I hope I'm getting closer with my generalized advice. So you have a big horizontal pipe at the top, then you have a bunch of T fittings along it pointing down. Use reducers or whatever you've got and go to as many small pipes as you can afford down as long as you can afford. At the bottom you would have another manifold, then that feeds into your tank. So in becks garage it would look like a pipe across at the top, a bunch of small pipes running down the wall all lined up with each other a big pipe across at the bottom. I would also remind you to put a drain on that bottom pipe and probably put an elbow on the end pointing up so you don't suck in any water sitting in the "manifold pipe". I hope that gets you closer? The exact specs are something you need to work out based on your system. But the shape is basically a Roman numeral 3, but with more vertical elements. Pictures of old steam or water radiators might also get you in the ballpark I'f you're more visual. What kind of radiator were you thinking? The idea definetly crossed my mind, but when I searched for water radiators I couldn't find much in my area but that could just be me. I think a water radiator could work or a steam one if you're willing to do the plumbing to change out the steam valve at the top for a plug to seal it off. I only have two concerns, and idk how valid they are I've never done any real work with radiators, but I would want to check with someone about what kind of pressure they can handle, cast iron fails a little bit too catastrophically for me to want to take any chances with it. And then also how well does it flow? Water has a lot more momentum than air, it's gonna flow a little more predictably, there's no use in a cooling unit that sends cooled air back on itself to pick up more heat and moisture again. Also you lose some efficiency in thermal conductivity between iron and copper. if you have an old radiator around and you know someone that can make sure it's safe I'd say try it and decide from there.

[@CG24601]

@@SHarris64 oh thats a good idea, I didn't consider looking at the refrigeration industry. Not gonna lie, my first thought was to plumb in a turbo intercooler from a scrap yard, but I think it might be too compact to flow well without a dedicated fan. Condenser from a reclaimed source might be the best way to go in terms of cost and efficiency.

[@klausnielsen1537]

A suggestion would be to take the air directly from the compressor and put it into the copper pipes before going back to the tank for storage. That way you have less moisture and corrosion in the tank. Another would be to connect a length of water hose to your drain valves and release them outside. I don't think micro droplets of oil and water in the air you breathe is good for you. But great mini series of videos and i agree with so many off the things you say and have done. Very interesting videos for sure.

[@arthurmoore9488]

That's a good one. I might try that on my compressor.

[@PaulThomas-qo9vy]

I see many people build the up/down expensive copper tube & soldered fittings coolers (this one looks nice & fairly neat) & I wonder if this is reinventing the wheel, when 150 years of technological advancements have brought us far more efficient heat exchangers than bare copper tube with No fins & No fan forcing air across them. When was the last time you saw an automobile or diesel truck with raw copper tube radiators or turbo aftercoolers, all with No fins & No fans? Fins added to copper tubes adds a quantum leap in surface area to exchange heat into the air, with ducting sealed against the cooler to force ram air thru the air resistant fins (resistant by design). If no ram air is available, then ducted fans sucking air thru the fins FTW. A Derale #15300 tube & fin 16 pass oil cooler commonly used by many on 5 h.p. & smaller air compressors as an aftercooler has -8 id fittings (1/2" i.d.). It also has internal "turbulators" to reduce laminar flow to help increase internal tube contact for max. efficiency & has a 200psi max pressure. Don't mount it on the guard by the flywheel because most air will go Around the cooler thru the 1" + gap between the guard & flywhl. fins. If you must mount it there slap & seal an electric fan directly to the cooler & the secondary bonus is more air thru the flywheel into the pumps cooling fins for additional cooling efficiency. The best hobby sized, engineered moisture removal system I've ever seen on YT (& I've seen hundreds) is by engineer Doug Kronemeyer, a 3 video series (DIY #9). His near passive system is so efficient that it rivals the performance of refrigerated air driers at a small fraction of the price! Study, take notes on his scientific, logical system & copy it! No more water in the tank! Air will be sand blaster, plasma cutter ready. Good luck & say goodbye to solid wooden wheels, bare copper tubes & other antiques. Cheerio!

[@repoman6034]

Awesome info. Thank you!

[@TheFalconJetDriver]

PVC is A REALLY REALLY bad Idea! 38 years ago a friend came to me to ask for help on a air distribution system at his wife's manufacturing plant. they made wood baskets that where sold to high end vendors. the pneumatic tools were mostly 18 gauge brad nailers and a few cut off tools. My friend was a civil engineer. I told him the only way I would get involved if it was engineered by PFE in Pneumatics a year latter he contacted me and said he had a plumber that would do the mechanical work. 6 months latter the plumber bailed for some reason. so I took a look at the project. Yep a PVC 8 inch Plenum 16 feet long with drops every 5 feet at 1 inch diameter reduced with bushings down to 3/4 for the quick disconnect fittings at each work station. the whole set up had about 40 stations. The 8 inch PCV plenum acted as an accumulator. the compressors I can not recall the CFM however It was my understanding that 150 PSI was the max from OSHA. he asked me to check the electrical work as that was my forte. all was good. 440 volt motors driving the 4 twinn compressors. we started each compressor and checked for 150 psi cut out on each. all was good. a Sunday evening 7:00 ish PM we fired off all 4 compressors we went to the loading dock 150 feet away to enjoy a beer. About 20 minutes later we had an explosion the 8 inch PVC pipe shattered sending shrapnel in every direction. pieces penetrated two walls of 5/8 dry wall and imbedded PVC into wood book cabinets and other objects. it would have beadly for anyone in the area. it sounded like a cannon going off Our ears were ringing. outside with a block wall and the doors closed between us and where the pipe let go. he Fire Department showed up saying there was a gas explosion somewhere near by. Don't use PVC! 😁🛫

[@johnlindblom6598]

I need to make one of these! If you take the copper off the wall it could be turned back on itself halfway for a more compact design. There's a guy that did this and attached it to the back of a mobile compressor and it worked great.

[@anthonyhoruzy4802]

great vidoes and great info man thank you. i was looking at a shulz 15ads dryer but im gonna make this instead. your plumb layout looks clean its a beautiful thing to see on the wall. the air is going to feed the machine torch on my Hyper 45xp for a crossfire XR. subscribed

[@JFSmith-nb8hf]

Planning on getting a plasma cutter for my new shop, looks like a good addition. I'd have to scale it up though, as a those small feed hoses would never supply the volume I need for some of my air tools. Guess I could just bypass it for those, as a simple water separator / filter is good enough for a die grinder, or impact gun. Thanks for the vid.

[@harperjmichael]

You could make a cam lever that operates all of your dump valves. Then if you want to automate use a timer that kicks in when the compressor cycles that operates a small bimba air cylinder to open and close your valves.

[@BeckTools]

I just purchase and electric dump valve that I'll be installing in part 3 of this video. :)

[@weldersandblaster]

My air cooler is 1.5" ID steel square horizontal tube, x 220 feet long. And it cools 375 CFM at 125 PSI down from 150 degrees F to 130 degrees F and condenses the water going to my water separator which is a 250 gallon high pressure tank allowing the liquid condensation to 99.9% drop out of the air stream before the air gets to my sandblast pot. I can separate 1 gallon of water out of my air per hour, here in Florida's high humidity. About 1 teaspoon of water gets to my pot and the last water separator. So little, I stopped draining the last water separator and just let 1 teaspoon go through my blast pot per hour. It's not enough to bother my performance. My compressor is running 100 HP diesels. Fuel costs me $250 per day. Most bigger plasma cutters us 6-8 CFM. My Primecut 60 uses 6 cfm. I run that off a small electric compressor.

[@Dishtech48]

Yea, Ive used this system for 3 years not.. It really does work.

[@ferrariowner123]

I’m a fitter by trade and we use these 1/4” auto drains. Meant for air systems. They are maybe $20 a piece.

[@BeckTools]

I purchased one about 6 months ago. I just haven't had time to install it. I'm going to do a part 3 at some point showing that integration into the system.

[@Derp3D]

Can this be done with pvc? Maybe large 2" or greater?

[@joell439]

Thanks for the summary 👍😎👍

[@simpsonrdlarry4385]

Great video 👍 I’m building one for my shop this weekend. Question… what is the blue thing hanging on the wall behind your compressor on the right side?? Some kind of a controller?

[@BeckTools]

That is the variable frequency drive that controls my 2x72 belt grinder. 😀

[@ihus9950]

Nice Dryer system, do you have the Demensions for this system, like to build one like it, but like to see what the costs will be today Thanks

[@BeckTools]

part 1 has all the dimensions and how I built it.

[@marcdouville5317]

Have you thought about running the tubing through a water tank to drop the temp even further? If so, why did you decide not to?

[@alexk6745]

5:34 Some guys said I've made it of 1/4 inch and it worked well. Great 1 inch will be working 4 times better. I actually disagree. The first thing is that it is not linear dependency. When you taking 1 inch against quater inch it means the volume will be increased square to increase of diameter as area got increased by square. So, the volume got increased 16 time but not 4. You may start think wow thats cool it is 16 times, but again not linear. Once you increased the diameter 4 times and area 16 times, the contact of hot area with the pipe only increased by 4 times. I still believe the best improvements are: 1) that system should be before the tank and immedeately after compressor. 2) Remove all the valves and leave the only last at the very last make an increased pipe before valve so that water will be collected there. There's no need to have so many valves. The only use is just to get understanding of efficioncy of each segment but technically each valce doesn't give much value as you can release the water using last one(need more volume for water collection)

[@BeckTools]

yes the area only increases 4x but the time in contact with that area also increases dramatically as the velocity is reduced by a large amount. I think we both agree 1" is better I'm not sure of the exact % of performance increase. I'm not a mathematician. :) We need to find a physics channel and pose this question to them. lol

[@MrKeith5021]

Shouldn't you hook the copper tube water separator between the pump and the tank so it can take the bulk of the water out of the air before it gets to the tank.

[@stickbogart3657]

❤ what do you do about the draining of your air compressor tank? Today which is October 16, 2023 I drained the condensation out of the bottom of my AirTag from my air compressor. I got about 8 ounces out of it what I’m thinking of doing is running the air, compressor, output of air pressure through the system and then into the tank. That way it would prevent condensation building up in the bottom of my air compressor take. What’s your thoughts on this? ❤

[@chrisduty2886]

Little late to the party, You would be better off running the Loops Horizontal, Air in to the Top like you have it. The the Water drains to bottom. That "drop" as you describe in in essence what most would call a "drip leg" , which you would then only need one. At that point I would use a bushing to attach to a 2" Black pipe Tee and have a 2" tail pipe for the drip leg, at the top of the T another 2" Black pipe and then a reducer. When the Air and moisture hit the larger pipe it will drop the moisture rather then continue to draw it through. You could step it up a little, you can buy a commercial made system that's filled with Glass beads, fill your tail pipe with Glass Marbles which will give more surface area and also slow the velocity of the air allowing condensed moisture to fall out.

[@majorpayne5289]

👍

[@macula1269]

Spin the unit 90 degrees, feed from the bottom and you can build this with only 1 ball valve.

[@aleue]

Another you tubeer showed the rust that gets into the system if Iron pipes were used. His setup was for painting, and every time rust particles came through his sprayer, it ruined the job

[@BeckTools]

I have particle separators and filters inline at the Plasma table to remove dirt, oil, and fine mist.

[@aleue]

@BecksArmory there has to be a way to use iron pipes. That sounds like a way to do it if that's what you have. I am trying to remove as much moisture from the lines before it get to the filter so that the filter lasts as long as they can. I am doing this so that my consumables of the plasma cutter last as long as they can. This was a helpful video, thanks

[@BeckTools]

@@aleue Iron pipe doesn't have the thermal transfer rates that you need. You can use it but you're kinda wasting your time and money. Why invest the time and money for something that doesn't really work??

[@jamie19881000]

Need to run directly from the compressor itself instead of the tank as when the air cools in the tank you will get water in the tank and create rust in the tank. Run it through the dryer first then into the tank will make your tank last a lot longer

[@mjasenn]

Mathematically speaking, 1" pipe has roughly 16x the cross-sectional area of 1/4" pipe.

[@m3chanist]

And the surface area to volume ratio? Inferior, very inferior, which is why the most efficient radiators run many thin tubes instead of a few big ones.

[@coloradodirtbike5930]

One major flaw... you are cooling the air coming out of the compressor tank. Doing it like you and 99% of the other videos, causes your tank still to get all that water and eventually will rust internally rot out over time. If you build that cooler and route it directly into your compressor tank it will keep down the moisture in the tank and make it last much longer while still providing you dry air.

[@BeckTools]

Thanks for the tips!

[@gr888dad]

But isn’t moisture still building up in your tank ? Why not come off your cylinder head to the copper pipe then into your tank. Wouldn’t it help the life of your compressor tank. Sorry didn’t know how else to describe it.

[@BeckTools]

Copper tube doesn't do well with vibration. it's likely to work harden and break. I have a drain on the tanks as well.

[@rojohe]

While this project is representative of a typical budget DIY solution, I'll stick with COTS refrigerated air dryers.

[@BeckTools]

I can respect that. :)

[@boredymcboredface8624]

Never use PVC with compressed air - it’s brittle and explodes.