Recommended air compressor?

[Alpha3000]

Trying to finish up construction of our start-up and need an air compressor. Will be used for keg washing and mobile bottling. Looking for recommendations. Still not sure if we should go oil free or rely on a air filter/oil separator. Thanks.

[TGTimm]

Forget oil-free compressors. Two kinds are available: ungodly expensive, and utterly useless.

Our Ingersol Rand rotary-vane compressor gives us joy. Very low maintenance, very quiet, very little oil to worry about (I haven't had to drain the oil separator since I installed this machine a year or so ago).

Ours is a 5 hp, with an 80 gal reservoir, with a second 80 gals in the shop and 30 gal surge tanks at both the bottler and the keg washer. Air storage is key--the less frequently the comp runs, the longer the motor lasts. The surge tanks at high-use points allow us to get away with undersized and over-length lines (150+ ft of 1/2" copper). Run the surge tanks at system pressure (we use 125 psi), with high-flow regulators and short, large ID lines to the machines.

An oil separator, pre-filter, air dryer, and mirco-filter are necessities, especially if you're blowing kegs or fermenters.

Our 5 hp is keeping up with a bottling run @ 3,000+ bottles/hour and keg washing right now. It's running about half the time, I'd say about 15 min. twice or thrice an hour (not timing, just guessing).

[GlennL]

most bottling/canning/kegging line manufacturers will steer you away from the oil-less type of compressor, they're usually not considered "industrial". We use 2 meheen bottlers and the minimum recommended ratings for air supply are 15cfm @90psi. Bottling, canning, and keg cleaning consume a lot of air. On a side note, most machine manufacturers will want dry air, using a legit refrigerated drier (not a dessicant type). We got away with not using a drier for a long time but added one when we started adding more expensive equipment we didn't want to ruin!

[Alpha3000]

Great info here, thanks for the advice!

[mswebb]

We're just about to set up our 5HP, 80 Gallon compressor. Any good sites to see how we set up the oil seperator, dryer, micro-filter, etc.

thanks

[TGTimm]

Compressor > Oil/water separator > pre-filter > refrigerated air dryer > micro-filter.

For high-draw equipment, such as keg washers and bottlers/canners, surge tanks (used compressor reservoirs--we use 30 gal vertical tanks, ~$50 ea. from a local compressor supply company) at full line pressure with high-flow, low pressure regulators at the point of use can greatly increase efficiency. These allow a slightly under-sized system to provide brief bursts of high volumes of air, and may be cheaper/more practical than running very large diameter primary lines to all equipment.

The more air storage you can get--added tanks, larger lines--the less frequently your compressor will start up, and the longer the motor will last. Electric motors hate short-cycling.

[E.Facchinei]

Coalescing/micro filter ?

Are coalescing filters and micro filters the same thing? I feel like Compressor >coalescing filter>refrigerated air dryer would accomplish "clean dry air".

[TGTimm]

A coalescing filter--AKA separator--removes bulk oil and water, and therefore goes before the air dryer. A mico-filter is a filter with pore size small enough to remove most bacteria--usually around 1 micron. These need dry air, and go after the air dryer. The pre-filter, ours is 5 micron (IIRC), ensures the air dryer gets reasonably clean air.