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Compressor Automatic Drain Valve

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awemawson:
I've been pursuing dry air recently, and had instituted a daily 'tank blow down' regime to keep the water level in the compressor receiver as low as possible. I had plumbed a pipe to the outside via a lever valve on the tank drain port.

Now my Hydrovane is located in a storage Portakabin a little away from the main workshop, and it's not somewhere I go very often, so this had become a bit of a bind. So I decided to automate the process.

A range of electrically timed valves have been emanating from China recently and I decided to order one and experiment. For the princely sum of £13.75 including postage I think that these are an absolute bargain.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/322324567502?_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2648&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

awemawson:
I've had the device 'on test' on the bench for the last couple of days and it's performed flawlessly, so today the time had come to plumb it in properly.

It seems that they've taken a standard 230 volt solenoid valve, and made an interposer timer that sits on the connection pins as a feed through device.

My only criticism is the range of timing that it offers - it can blow down in bursts of 0.5 to ten seconds at a periodicy of every half minute to every 45 minutes. For my air usage this even on the 0.5 second timing is too frequent over 24 hours, so I've decided to run it through a plug in mains timer that I had left over from something else, to limit it initially to only 12 hours a day - I may reduce this further in the light of experience.

awemawson:
Now (obviously) the drain fitting in the tank is at the bottom, and the device has to stick out to one side quite a distance to get round the curvature of the tank. This means potentially the whole lot may vibrate to pieces with resulting instant deflation of the tank - I'll observe it in use for a few days to see if this actually happens  :scratch:

So a quick rummage though my box of variegated plumbing fittings produced a reasonable set up 

awemawson:
So having screwed the elbow fitting into the tank and fitted the rest onto it,it was just a case of running a 15 mm plastic pipe to the outside world to drain out the condensate, and wait for the Loctite sealing compound to set up, which is where I'm up to now. I'll pressure it up in an hour or two and do a leak test.

awemawson:
Glad to be able to report it seems leak free up to 125 psi  :clap:

I did notice a minor leak on some of the adjacent air plumbing, so that has been rectified. This air system is pumped up 24 hours a day and is distributed between four buildings so I 'm a bit paranoid about air leaks as they can cost a fortune in un-necessary compressor running.

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