“The impact of COVID-19 on the compressed air market has been significant,” comments Allen Cockfield, CEO of Artic Driers International. “The ability of importers like Artic to import equipment stocks has been severely affected due to massively increased air freight costs, along with a slowdown at the country’s docks due to reduced staff levels. This situation will be the order of the day for several months to come.”
As a critical supplier to the industry, Artic Driers continued to service its customers throughout the lockdown, though at a reduced capacity. Cockfield used the downtime wisely, designing pro bono a locally made low dewpoint air drying rig for breathing air systems that can be used in emergency hospital units.
“The project was challenging, but interesting,” says Cockfield, “especially the design of a variety of filter casings to be built locally for these sets. It was a logical continuation of what we have been quietly doing for the past 12 months. Artic has built a large number of different sized low dewpoint heatless adsorption air dryers for a range of clients in diverse industries.”
Due to the COVID-19 related transport and freight restraints, the new SA series of dryers has now been officially released. The range will provide clients with shorter lead times than imported units. Additionally, the units are cost-effective, and most importantly, use local materials, labour and suppliers, contributing significantly to the local economy.
Conservative construction and design
The SA series of dryers is conservatively designed and based on the 30 years of Artic Driers’ experience: long contact times and larger than normal desiccant loads mean that the dryer will provide -40⁰C PDP (pressure dewpoint) compressed air for use in a manufacturing plant or a medical facility. Heavy duty design and construction, along with simple controls, have been deliberately included in the new series to ensure reliability and ease of maintenance at site.
The IP45 panel has a simple adjustable timer sequence. The control panel timing sequences can be changed easily at site if needed. Another notable feature is the use of an optional dewpoint probe to display drying performance in the straight timer mode, or the dryer can be controlled by the same probe and the timing cycles can be prolonged, thereby reducing compressed air purge loses.
Despite a range of innovative features, these units come at competitive prices, while the cost of ownership is low when compared with some of the imported options.
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