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Air compressor quandary

At Pitcon (chemistry meeting), the inductively coupled plasmas are run all week long (8-20 liters/min at ambient pressure) from a liquid argon dewar about 18" dia and 4' tall. Liquid nitrogen is likely to be cheaper. You may be able to rent the dewar for a short time. Call your compressed-gas supplier, see what he/she says.

Find out first if it will deliver the volume and pressure you need. The dewar is pretty well insulated and bleed is surprisingly slow. We keep a liquid nitrogen dewar at the university for about a month.

Best -- Terry

Reply to
Terry
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There _are_ small screw compressors. I walked past one in the Labs at work yesterday, 10cuf/m. It was noticeably quiet. The silly thing in this case was that it was 40 ft away from 300hp of big screw compressor, the wrong side of a very solid wall with no penetrations...

I think that the little one is actually on rental for that particular job.

Mark Rand RTFM

Reply to
Mark Rand

Exceedingly quiet! I found one at the dump (that I've sold) - you could hardly tell that it was even running. Just a hum, really.

Bob

Reply to
Bob Engelhardt

On 29 Apr 2009 16:49:07 GMT, the infamous steamer scrawled the following:

G'luck!

------------------------------------------------------ No matter how hard you try, you cannot baptize a cat. ----------------------------

Reply to
Larry Jaques

--Kewl idea actually. But there's the problem of liability even with an inert gas, with kids running around everywhere. Also my 'musical instrument' is very gas-sensitive; i.e. if I use anything other than air I have to retune it, which is a PITA.

Reply to
steamer

--Yeah that's the goal; gotta get different solenoid valves to make that happen and that means more money and a pile of wiring. Time's growing short but that's maybe what I'll have to wind up doing.

Reply to
steamer

That's the time you park a 100HP screw compressor (either 460V 3Ph or engine driven) and a big refrigerated or regenerative air dryer out behind the convention center, and bring a LOT of hose (and a bunch of

2" black pipe for the long straight runs) and several manifold tanks.

The only problem I can see is getting rugged and "Weights and Measures" accurate CFM meters that can handle 125 - 150 PSI "mains pressure" and don't cost a fortune.

(The "Roots" style turbine gas meters would work, but they utterly fail at 'cheap'. And the oil fill gearboxes means you have to use care in transport and setup to always keep them upright. And the old style bellows meters are only good for 10 - 25 PSI.)

Then you can split the rental costs betwen the users by CFM used.

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Reply to
Bruce L. Bergman

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