Easy and Cheap solution removing water from comp air

[suttonlive]

I have been doing alot of media blasting lately on the 1964 Gladiator truck and was having problems with moisture getting into the blaster. I had a moisture separator and particulate separator about six feet from the compressor.

My solution was that I added an air conditioning condenser between the compressor and the same filters that I already had. It made all the difference. I now have no problems at my end device. The reason it works is that the temperature of the air is reduced with the condenser coil. That allows the moisture to not be suspended in the air stream and drop out of the air allowing the separator to do its job.

The condenser coil was just out a car that I parted out nothing special.

Not that it is complicated, but here are some pictures. If you look close at the seperator on the right it has a sight glass and you can see the float at the top. That is after about an hour of running. Prior to adding the heat exchanger I rarely had to dump water out of that separator.







Hope it helps someone else. You could expand on the idea and add fans, or set it in front of and AC vent, or a anything to drop the air temperature of the air and it would dry the air more.

CS

[serehill]

You really can do better with better filters. A good intake filter on the compressor & 2 high quality filters on the output is the best.
This idea is great but in a long term usage will heat up really quick & be useless. A good condensor fan off of a central air conditioning unit would make this really functional. As you may or may not know High volume units use this exact same set up with fans. Without air flow it will only work a few seconds. If you're having problems with humidity it's your filters as much as heat. Talk to a painter they will tell you spend money on filters.
We have compressors where I work that operate in clean rooms & you find the filters are every bit as important as condensors. The filters on our condensors are actually in the air flow too to keep them cool as well.

[jamesdart]

i put an electric drain on my tank, 50' of hose between my compressor and a pipe drop on the wall. filter is mounted on the pipe with a drop leg and drain valve on that before the filter. i rarely have any moisture problems. i was going to try what you did but i tried blowing air through the condenser i had and for some reason it was a huge restriction.