My old Monkey Wards 2 piston, single stage, 6 gallon (guessing), 1 hp,
120V air compressor runs as hot as 180 degrees on the cylinder head when I'm using it a lot. Is that a normal temperature for this kind of compressor?
Yes. Compressing air heats it up. Many industrial compressors are water cooled and then the air goes through a chiller to remove the moisture. Our
150 hp at work will have cooling water temperatures up to 120, air temperatures over 250.Be sure you have enough oil in the machine as that aids in cooling.
well, pv=nrt so it will get quite hot simply through adiabatic compression alone. If you know the compression ratio of the cylinders, you can calculate the theoretical pressure of the fully compressed air with the piston at the top of the stroke. Obviously it shouldn't get any hotter than that, and likely will stabilize at a lower temperature due to the cooling fins radiating some of the heat to the atmosphere.
That said, that does seem a little warm; your average compressor will get "hot" but I don't recall using any where it was significantly warmer than, say, domestic hot water even after heavy use, but then again I don't recall using any smaller than your typical roll-around 20 gallon or so jobs.
nate
Ashton Crusher wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
If you run it a lot higher than the rated duty cycle it's gonna be abnormally hot I would think.
the important question is "duty cycle"........
how much "on" time? how much "off" time?
180 is hot but if you're working this puppy hard, its to be expectedeither use less air (cfm's) or set up a fan to help cool it
cheers Bob
It is basically the same thing as a car engine without the fuel to burn to make it hotter. Car engines need cooling because of the added heat from the fuel being burned. They cool car engines down to 180-
200 degrees, which is the normal temp. I am just guessing, but I would think 180 is about right.Hank
It's not the same or similar to a car engine. In a car engine without fuel, the air would be compressed on the compression stoke, then immediately decompressed on the power stroke in the cylinder. When you compress it, it gets hot. When you decompress it, it gets cold. In an air compressor, the cylinders are strictly COMPRESSING. The decompression takes place elsewhere, eg where it's being used in a tool, or blowout gun, etc.
eg where it's
Kinda picky aren't ya? I was trying to keep it simple in the fact it is only a piston that moves up and down. But since you want to get all techy on me.........When the outlet valve (think exhaust )of the compressor closes (piston going down) the intake valve opens and brings in cool air that also helps cool the cylinder, along with the cooling fins. Altho there is significant heat built up in regards to compressing the air, it still isn't a match for fuel being burnt also.
Hank
A single stage air compressor can easily get hot enough to cause a 2nd degree (blisters) level burn on the skin.
If you can to get "scientific" that find out what happens when you compress air from 0 psig to 135 psig under adiabatic conditions. (Add about 15 psi to convert to psia.)
Upon failure, we disassembled a large compressor at the autoshop i worked at. There was carbon on top the pistons.
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