Super Air Nozzle Works to Improve Blowing Force While Keeping Customer Compliant with OSHA Rules

The customer works for a major paper producing company. They have an application where they use a 10 foot long air lance to clear out material from what is termed a "bark bin". The bark is de-watered, stored and used for fuel to produce steam and electricity in the plant. Occasionally, the customer must clear out the bark bin from above and had been using a long piece of conduit to do the job. They had no such "nozzle" on the end of their air lance, just an open pipe thread. There were three big problems with this application: 1. Non-compliance with OSHA Dead End Safety Directive. 2. They used more air volume than really necessary. 3. The noise level when in operation was intolerable. Hearing protection had to be worn. The customer is now using an EXAIR Model 1112 3/4 NPT Super Air Nozzle on the end of their air lance and are now in compliance with OSHA rules. They have also reduced their air consumption to 91 SCFM and reduced the sound level to about 96 dB. While these numbers may still appear to be large, they are much lower than the 200 SCFM and 105 dB figures that the customer was reporting before making the switch. One last note concerns the fact that the customer was also able to increase their force generated by the air lance so much that they have been able to get the clean-up job done much faster with an average time savings of 5 - 10 minutes per clean-up.