Airline Oil / Water Traps?

Here's a strange one for all those engineer minded people,

I have a Clarke 7/100 compressor as it is nice and quiet but sadly it also generates a lot of air line water with the current weather.They also tend to "oil" the air due to the nature of the pumps they use (like fridge compressors) this gets to be a pain in the butt when everything starts getting water marked so does anybody have any idea on good air cleaning?

I've thought about an expansion bottle kept outside with maybe some kapok or similar in it, like a double threaded tube 3" in diam and about 10 inches long with a drain valve? or maybe one of those aero engine filters the model boys use?
The commercial filters / water traps like the in line bowl type are crap and the desiccant small in line ones for paint guns don't really man up enough to do the job.

I don't mind having something made if there is an easy way round it that doesn't involve me having to buy a refrigerant drier for around £1,000 that may not be needed in summer.

Hum random thought? what about using a chiller type system that chills the expansion tank to condense the water out?

any thoughts most welcome

cheers

Dave

I used an old mini compressor tank - pump died.
Stood the tank on it's end.
Where the big standpipe with gauge,etc was I made an inlet fitting that forced the air to swirl around in the tank in a spiral motion. Just a blocked end on the inside end, with a small saw slit on the side.
The outside has a one way valve so when compressor turned off there is no backflow.
Another fitting nearby, which was the compressor inlet is now the outlet, with a gauge on it and a few fittings and a tap.
I've used it on polished stainless and not an oil or water mark, ever.
Used for 800 hours, running small volume for swarf removal.
Thought I'd better empty it. Waste of time. Do it in another 2 years.

cheers Neil,

That's the sort of thing I'm looking for, just got to find a tank now or maybe worth buying one of the vertical accessory tanks (about £150 here)?

What about keeping the ancillary tank outside to keep it cool?

thanks

Dave

I think you can buy water/oil filters as a prebuilt unit that just goes inline with the pipe? See them on compressors pretty often. Not 100% sure what they're actually called though.

Dave, surely you can find one being tossed out? It has two holes and a big inspection hole and a drain hole. It often has a handle, and is not hard to stand up. Welding feet on might not be a good idea! unless you are an expert.
We collect them off the nature strips here, just like we do PCs with parallel ports.
Keep it outside? At least twice a week it is 38C here!! in summer, and mid 40s too.
And you guys think it is hot when it is 30. 32 in my workshop today.
If you have overhead plumbing teed off to a dropper, make the tee go upwards over a loop before going down.
This stops a lot of stuff in the mainline going down each dropper.
Really best to use a chiller dryer, but for low volume my system works ok.
Centrifugal force at work.
If you put a couple of KG of rice in the bottom of my tank arrangement it would stay dry for a long time.

One thing that has worked very well is to run some copper pipe that is twice as big as your regular pipe straight up the wall, do a 180 with it back down to a water trap, then back up and down one more time. It lets gravity pull the water out, and the larger pipe slows down the air speed. We totally dried up our air in a shop by doing that.

This will solve your problem.

DFD10 in Line 1 4" Compressed Air Filter Dryer Desicant | eBay

If you run a desicant filter you should run a trap in front of it otherwise you will be replacing the media every couple of days. We run a big unit with a chiller and trap on our printer and still need to replace the media about once a month.

I'll take all your old desicant.... It can be dried and re-used.

We dry our own.

The old desicant is only good if it is not contaminated with oil.