Home made intercooler

S

Senile Old Fart

As you guys know I am one cheap sumbiatch, and poor too. As my mother has said we are Irish jews, we can pinch a dime out of a penny, roflol.

Over the last 10 years I have tried a number of different low budget ways to get cool dry air. Some worked great but weren't feasible in winter, or required to much set up and break down. ( remember I am a garage hack, not a shop).

My latest prototype is by far the best idea I have had.
The delta/p is just over 105F when I measured it with a laser thermometer.
I installed it in line between the compressor head and the storage tank.
The auto drain on the tank no longer is spewing out lots of rusty water, just a little blip of dry air ( set at 2 seconds every 10 minutes. only runs when the compressor is used).

I salvaged the ends of some radiant heating fin tube from a construction job. The fin tube is 3/4" id which helps slow the air down and have a longer contact time with the tubing which should allow a better heat transfer rate.
The "mud" leg on the exit has a ball valve that I left slightly cracked and draining into a milk jug. the great majority of water was drained into the jug with almost dry air going into the storage tank.
When I build a permanent model the open mud leg will be closed off with a canister type auto drain.
The wood frame will be replaced with sheet metal and I am going to form a shroud for the fan to direct the air flow.
The concept proved itself, now I just got to pretty it up.

Cost of this project was under $15.

Thinking I will sell both of the refrigerated air coolers I have never gotten around to hooking up, lol.

As they say there is more than one way to skin a cat, what is your way to cool your air.



click on photo to enlarge
 
this fall my compressor will move about 100 ft or so to it's own little shack. tired of hearing it. from there i will plumb underground in a zig zag down to the shop. where it comes into the building i will have a good trap . should cool the air enough for me.
 
you know its funny. i was just on the website for the company that makes my blaster. they have aftercooler/watertrap units available and its basically a beefed up version of exactly what you have there. a radiator with an air or electirc powered fan and a moisture seperator. the difference is you paid $15 and they want $6600 for one!!!
 
SOF,

My single-stage compressor has the same 1/2-inch OD copper line going from the pump to the tank check valve and it gets pretty hot. Checked the temperature with one of those cheap infrared thermometers and it was 315-degrees F. The tank heats up pretty quick and the air heading out into the system has a lot of moisture. My fifty foot length of galvanized pipe extracts most of it before it reaches the desiccant dryer.

I really like your design to cool and dry the air before it gets to the tank. I like your price even better. I found that finned copper baseboard pipe on the Internet but it's $9 a foot (3/4") so five two-foot sections would run me $90 plus fittings and the fan (have enough scraps for the wooden box). The scrap yards in South Florida don't have much in the way of heating supplies and the A/C stuff is full of oil and is usually seriously corroded. A side-effect of being old, cheap and retired means I don't get out much so my solutions usually involve UPS, Fedex or the Post Office.

I looked for aftercoolers and the cheapest I could find at Grainger was $199. It has 1-inch NPT fittings and says it flows 35 CFM at 100 psi. This 16"x5.5" aftercooler would need some kind of fan setup but I guess a couple of 110v muffin fans would work.
Air-Cooled-Aftercooler-4UJG3_AS01.JPG


B&M sells a 13"x9" transmission cooler with a 9.5" fan setup for $230. It just needs a 12v power supply. It has 1/2-inch NPT fittings and a 175-degree sensor.
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I also found a B&M SuperCooler for $92 that has 1/2-inch NPT fittings and is 11"x11"x1-1/2". Couldn't find any flow numbers but it shouldn't be a drastic decrease. I think this is what I'll get.
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I have one of these 12" A/C duct booster fans and with a square duct adapter to blow some air through the SuperCooler, the air going into the tank could be a lot cooler with a lot of water condensed out.
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SOF, great idea. One suggestion, the air temp coming directly from the pump will be extremely hot and will deteriorate that hose quickly. You may consider replacing it between the pump and cooler with copper.
 
Seen this done before and a great idea BUT!

Proper set up is copper tubing at least 15FT from compressor to cooler and put the cooler outside as well as as much of the copper you can.
I think I'm at 50-60 feet of cooper.
The copper tubing can be in a 2-3 roll and the more you use the better as it will cool the air and make the cooler a lot more efficient.

Shine, in FL I could not stop the water finally ran a 2" PVC pipe from compressor a foot down in dirt and 1/2 way around the garage an in, never had a water issue again.
 
C10chas;11825 said:
SOF, great idea. One suggestion, the air temp coming directly from the pump will be extremely hot and will deteriorate that hose quickly. You may consider replacing it between the pump and cooler with copper.
Click to expand...

Once it is a finished product, the red hose will be replaced with teflon lined stainless braid hose.
Yes the oulet air is hot, 197f when I shot it with the laser gun.
 
Barryk;11826 said:
Seen this done before and a great idea BUT!

Proper set up is copper tubing at least 15FT from compressor to cooler and put the cooler outside as well as as much of the copper you can.
I think I'm at 50-60 feet of cooper.
The copper tubing can be in a 2-3 roll and the more you use the better as it will cool the air and make the cooler a lot more efficient.

Shine, in FL I could not stop the water finally ran a 2" PVC pipe from compressor a foot down in dirt and 1/2 way around the garage an in, never had a water issue again.
Click to expand...

Barry, there is no way the misses will stand for a contraption to be hanging from the ceiling of her patio. ( the other side of the wall behind the compressor.

As far as running lotsa copper, the fin tube and fan are very efficient at moving heat from the media in it, I do not know the engineering number but it is substantial.
If it wasn't fin tube then I do not think I would be getting more than maybe a 20f drop.
There is only 7.5 ft of fin tube and it is achieving a 105f delta .
 
shine;11740 said:
this fall my compressor will move about 100 ft or so to it's own little shack. tired of hearing it. from there i will plumb underground in a zig zag down to the shop. where it comes into the building i will have a good trap . should cool the air enough for me.
Click to expand...

I also thought about doing the underground thing but up here it would need to be buried 8feet or any water would freeze.
 
i will run about 200 ft of pvc underground . even in summer the temp at 2 ft is about 55 degrees. the shop is lower than the compressor so there will be plenty of fall. it will come in at about 2-3 ft up the wall. i will have a trap and drain followed by another moisture trap then a tp filter. should be no problems. the tp filter is the best. it will suck moisture out of the air. the booth is ok now but out in the shop it can get a little wet sometimes running air tools.

and yes i use pvc in my shop. i've used it since the 70's and never had a failure. but i also see no reason to try and keep 120 lbs of pressure in the system. no tool uses more than 45 lbs. setting it higher buys you nothing but hotter air.
 
Cooling the air and getting water out is important but even the refer units can only drop the dew point to 35-40 degrees, so you have to have to good filter system in order to get the air dryer. The three stage units can get the dew point down to minus 40 degrees
 
you know , i've done this for over 40 years and can count on one hand the shops that had really good air dryers.
 
I'm probably going for overkill since I recently had an air problem and Barry help me figure it out. So I did a lot of research and decided to put the three stage in. I have a lot of metal pipe and its pretty dry, but this summer I did notice a little moisture in the line. So after the air pressure problem, I just want to be sure any problems I have are either me or the product.
 
I have tried a few different types of air dryers. I used to have the 3 stage desiccant type and while it worked, it got saturated quickly and youbwere always maintaining it. The new shop i swore i would never use another one of those unless it is for a final stage. This shop i put in a refrigerated dryer and have neber been sorry. That thing gives me nothing but dry air all the time and i never have to touch it. With all the businesses going under there are a ton of refer dryers on ebay right now. You can pick them up pretty cheap. Also another note, a friend of mine bought on of the harbor freight ones and has worked flawlessly for him and its only like $300. Has all honeywell controlls. Pretty nice from hf which is surprising.
 
That would be sweet actually, because my air gets so cold in the winter that I have to wear gloves everytime I use a tool, and as I understand it the refer dryers raise the temperature of the air before it exits. But I already bought the 3 stage, and I will just use it for painting.
 
Well this thread inspired me and since I share the bug cheapasseus sumbiatchpoor with SOF this was my solution.

I decided to fight water with water and as I recently took possession of a heater core from a 97 Lincoln which was replaced to cure an overheating problem (which it didn't) I scrounged through my odd's and ends and came up with this addition to my air supply.
It actually is a product of this accumulated thread gleening bits of info from each post and then giving it my own spin.
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I figure if I really need to cool more I'll just add a hose to the bucket if the water starts to warm up.....
 
Perfect and what about a large transmission cooler, with quick connects and a premium one option with quick connects and an electric fan.
Now a motor guard M35 at the end of that cooler and a do it yourself guy would have one heck of a system, instead of my probably $1500 system.

Got to be a good market for them, or I have always thought that.
 
my system seems to work extremely good.. air compressor in basement, whole shop dryer about 20ft away, just auto drain, only catches some bulk moister, then another 50ft.. through another 80 gallon storage tank with drain, then another 20 feet to a drop valve, then up to shop.. but from that point to the booth there are 6 more drops in a loop system, and then a sharpe filter in the booth. I never get moisture.. The basement is always so cool in the summer, which i think makes a big difference in itself..

All the pipe is ust black pipe but because it goes so far before it reaches the booth it works good..

I have got water at the first drop before but it just reminds me to drain the drops, then no more water.
 
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