Protecting the investment in high-efficiency boilers, chillers, and other system components necessitates efficient fluid distribution. Eliminating air and dirt removes many routine maintenance items, saves energy, and improves overall system performance and heat transfer. But, not all dirt and air separators are equal or perform the same. Tune in to see why we recommend Spirotherm dirt and air separator technology for many applications.
Full show transcript:
Brian
Hey, welcome to Engineering. Tomorrow, I’m your host, Brian Gomski. This week we have a couple of great guests, Matt Hefley with Spirotherm, who is an expert in coalescing air separators and dirt separation for system loops. We also will have Jeff Henderson, who is a 15 year season sales engineer for Marshall Vasey. So without further ado, sit back, relax and let’s dove right in.
Speaker 2
Broadcasting around the world. This is Engineering tomorrow. The podcast committed to bringing you the best in commercial construction on design and engineering from the brightest minds in the industry. This is the stuff they don’t teach you in school. So sit back, relax and open your mind. You’re about to get the insider knowledge to improve your next construction project or advance your career.
Speaker 2
This is engineering. Tomorrow.
Jeff
Well, we’re here today to talk about, you know, spiral therm. You know, the big thing that that we’ve heard is it’s kind of the new normal nowadays when it comes to air and dirt separation. It seems like a lot of the industry has has come to terms and understands the importance of removing air and dirt from the system.
Jeff
So with that, I kind of turned it over to you, Matt, and maybe we start off by talking a little bit about, you know, how does errant dirt affect your system?
Matt
Your separators were invented because of no egos. And but now people are through to better understanding. People are instant. They’re relating my fluid to the blood. So, you know, I got this great slide that it’s the lifeblood of the system. You can have the best chillers or the best condensing boilers and gas pumps, everything, you know, even controls.
Matt
But if your water quality is is not very good, then that system’s never going to reach its peak efficiency. It’s like having a hybrid car and you’re having your tires partially inflated. I mean, what good is that? You know? So the distribution efficiency is where the air separator, nobody thinks about it. But that’s kind of where this is evolving to right?
Jeff
So, yeah. So what you’re saying you got dirty blood? Doesn’t matter how good everything else is, as is working.
Matt
What does your body write if your blood quality is not good to deliver food and an oxygen to it?
Jeff
Right. Right. Okay. Well, kind of getting into a little bit of the weeds of, you know, how specifically air and dirt affects your system. Do I talk a little bit? Maybe we just start with air and what it does to a a hydraulic system, a typical hydraulic system.
Matt
So some of the easiest ones, you know, it was invented for maintenance purposes for no heat calls. So we have air locks in the system, no heating or sometimes no cooling. That is from too much air. Being bound in the pipes and the fluid can’t push it through. So somebody has to mainly bleed it. And we see this all the time where this can be a process over weeks, I’ll get some flow established.
Matt
The more air will come back to that point. And it’s a never ending nightmare for some folks. So that’s again that’s that’s why they were first invented really was for for air locks. Then we have noise and not uncommon have a gurgling, pitchy noise. So I was at a hospital in Toledo once and on their whiteboard, you know, they said they showed them there they had to move a patient because the air noise from the chilled water system was so, so annoying to that patient, which, you know, it’s kind of extreme.
Matt
I hear more of that in higher ed. We do a lot of the colleges and universities and simply in the classroom it’s disruptive. Whereas velocity noise sometimes we get chilled water is more constant. It’s like a white noise or a fan noise. You will tune that out. But air noise quite often is is pitchy in in most cases annoying to people.
Matt
And then, of course, when the further with noise is we’ll hear our bombs cavity hitting. So you’ll hear that vibration. We’ve heard rocks that sound like they’re they’re churning rocks in there. Well, that’s maybe not the case. It’s air bubbles expanding about a thousand times from the differential and pressure in there. And course, that’s very damaging to it.
Jeff
But you can really eat up a impeller really quick with cavitation.
Matt
Right. And then pump seals as well. So that’s another factor the air can actually shorten the life of. So there’s a number of reasons why, you know, we care about air.
Jeff
Right?
Matt
And then and then also something we’ve kind of discovered by mistake is what we didn’t discover that airs an insulator. But we’ve discovered that it has insulating qualities. So when we started getting feedback from our clients out there that my system isn’t having to run as longer, or I’m getting a I’m getting better heat transfer, I’m getting more of a delta T at this coil.
Matt
And, you know, that was like, what did you guys do? And I don’t know, we just removed the air, but that’s what it came to. It’s, you know, I always point to double pane windows. We have some kind of gas in there that’s slowing that reaction, that heat transfer down and seeing things on our pipes. Right. We we insulate the exterior of the pipes, but nobody really thinks about these little bubbles that are circulating through the inside.
Matt
Well, there it’s also insulators, but the system still works. So that’s where the great mystery becomes like, well, I don’t have any problems there. It’s like, well, this can still have a lot of air and that system going to work. It’s just having a run longer. So we’re wasting energy. We’re inefficient at that point.
Jeff
So the implications of having air in your system and not having it properly remove our you know, you get sound complaints, you get pop cavitation, which could be damaging maintenance costs for more seals and pillars that need to be swapped out. You get an efficiency like you just said, it’s an insulator. So chiller your boilers are not as efficient because we’re not exchanging heat at the same rate that would be if you had a water system, right?
Jeff
So those types of things that are dollar signs left and right and and that could be very expensive for an owner or installing contractor moving on a dirt, obviously. I mean, he said I got dirt in my head, my water. And you just know right off the bat that’s a bad thing. What are some problems that you’ve seen or run into with hydraulic systems?
Matt
Well, the question I always ask everybody is, you know, my water looked clear or it should have been clear when I filled filled up the system. So what happened were, you know, where did this train run off the tracks? And it’s you know, sometimes it’s on a brand new LEED certified building that had been flushed and had all the proper checks.
Matt
It’s been in buildings where it’s been properly chemically treated. And so how does that occur? Well, it’s it goes back to the air. The air causes the oxidation. Anything that’s iron or steel related. It’s going to it’s going to rust. Right. If I have enough air in that system. And so that’s where it’s damaging. Chemicals don’t really get rid of the air.
Matt
They only mascot. At some point they’re going to go down a drain. So chemicals are good, especially in the beginning, but they’re really not going to help me with my heat transfer or those issues either. So it’s kind of, you know, part of the equation. But that’s in our industry that’s been kind of the answer to that. Let’s dump in a bunch of chemical inhibitors, oxygen scavengers, and let’s add some side stream filtration to it.
Matt
Say it’s infiltration is good. I mean, I, I have a filter on my whole house filter my domestic side, you know, I believe in filtration. But the problem with filtration is it doesn’t get rid of the root cause, which is the air. So it always goes back to the air. No matter what we’re talking about, it’s it’s the devil.
Matt
It’s the root cause for a lot of problems in a hydraulic system.
Jeff
Right. So you got to get both out of your system with dirt. I can’t tell you how many times that we get phone calls and say, I’ve got really dirty water. What are some ways to to get rid of that? And all of them except for, you know, installing and we’ll get to this a little later separate it requires adding energy, whether it’s adding a pump for side stream or putting in a big basket strainer that requires maintenance energy.
Jeff
You know, this man going out there to swap out so implications of dirt are enormous get clogged system same thing you 13 insulator it’s going to stop heat transfer on your chillers and and boilers and heat exchangers and you’re going to lose dollars and efficiency.
