Industrial Utility Efficiency

Special Engineering Meets Speed at Parker's Finite Airtek Filtration Division (FAF)


Good afternoon. Thank you for the tour of your Lancaster (NY) operations. This is quite a modern facility!

Good afternoon, we’re glad you liked it! This is a 130,000 square foot manufacturing, warehousing, application engineering, new product development and customer service center all dedicated to Parker compressed air treatment and chiller technologies. We have 70,000 square feet dedicated to manufacturing, 30,000 square feet to warehousing and shipping, and 30,000 square feet for customer service and application engineering.

Parker has invested \$5 million into all areas of this facility - including a \$700K state-of-the-art research and development laboratory, training facility, office updates, emergency generators, lean manufacturing processes, robust shipping packaging and a brand new sandblast booth. It’s been an exciting journey. The Parker brands supported here include Airtek, domnick hunter, Finite and Zander.

 

Newly installed sandblast booth with domnick hunter Grade D breathing air system

Newly installed sandblast booth with domnick hunter Grade D breathing air system

 

The Parker FAF Division has several market segments we focus on with our technologies and sales channels that include: oil and gas exploration and pipelines, natural gas vehicles and compressed natural gas, biogas with Siloxane removal, food and beverage, life sciences such as medical equipment manufacturers and pharmaceutical sterile filtration, and industrial manufacturing.

 Ron Nelson and Allan Hoerner (left to right) at Parker’s Lancaster New York manufacturing center.

Ron Nelson and Allan Hoerner (left to right) at Parker’s Lancaster New York manufacturing center.

 

Please describe your manufacturing of refrigerated air dryers?

The Lancaster (NY) facility manufactures Thermal Mass Cycling (200 to 1000 scfm) and Non-Cycling (200 to 1200 scfm) refrigerated air dryers that feature a unique 4-in-1 heat exchanger with less than 2 psi pressure drop.

Our Magnum Series Cycling dryers use our unique tube-in-shell heat exchangers for dryer flows from 1200 to 25,000 scfm. We recently shipped an 18,000 scfm refrigerated dryer to an automotive plant. “Big air” users significantly support this product line due to the smooth-bore copper tube-in-shell heat exchangers featuring very low pressure drops. Unlike other brands using aluminum-block heat exchangers for high air flows, this smooth-bore heat exchanger requires no pre-filter and is cleanable as part of a standard preventative maintenance practice. Contaminated air goes right through the tube side to the filter. Our facility is unique in that we manufacture the heat exchangers and filter pressure vessels ourselves. We design-in additional capacity to ensure dewpoint and pressure drop integrity.

Magnum cycling refrigerated dryer

A 15,000 scfm Magnum cycling refrigerated dryer

 

How do Parker Service Centers (PSC’s) support the demand for refrigerated air dryers and filters below 500 scfm?

The answer is with speed and lower freight impacts! Refrigerated air dryers are shipped to our clients from six Parker Service Centers (PSC’s) in the United States, one in Toronto and two in Mexico. Our plant, here in Lancaster (NY), ships the filters and dryers to the PSC’s. The PSC inventory and purchasing systems are all interconnected and if one item is out-of-stock, it ships automatically from the nearest PSC location. All locations also carry key spare parts. This is another example of how we really leverage Parker’s assets.

This investment was made due to research conducted with Parker distributors. The U.S. shipping locations are Lancaster (NY), Oxford (MI), Portland (OR), Austin (TX), Los Angeles (CA) and Charlotte (NC). This decentralized PSC stocking strategy began about a year ago and it’s been significantly well received.

 

Please describe your desiccant dryer and filter manufacturing.

The Lancaster (NY) facility manufactures heatless, heat-of-compression, medical, oil-field rated, high pressure, externally heated and blower purge desiccant dryers. It’s a huge line-up of technologies! We can offer almost any type of standard or customized configuration or certification to meet the needs of our customers. Our standard twin-tower heatless desiccant dryer range goes from 10 to 6000 scfm. The externally heated and blower purge desiccant dryer range goes from 100 to 12,000 scfm.

We fabricate filter housings and mist eliminators from 3 inch up to 12 inch connection sizes for flow ranging from 200 to 12,000 scfm. Smaller filter sizes are shipped from stock from all supporting FAF facilities.

I was very impressed by your Engineering Group-particularly that huge whiteboard full of custom projects! Please describe their mission.

Be glad to. A significant portion of our desiccant dryer business goes through our Special Engineering Group. This team is on a mission to provide customers with exactly what THEY want – as opposed to what the “standard special package” is! We embrace taking a clean sheet of paper and working with a distributor and end user on defining their needs. For some clients it’s all about product certifications – for others it’s about meeting some unique challenges provided by their application.

For pressure vessels, we are an ASME Coded shop and provide ASME certification for the North American market and CRN Certifications for all Canadian provinces. We perform our own hydro-test procedures here pressurizing the vessels to 1.3 times rated pressure for the inspectors. Our products are also ETL and CSA approved for electrical.

 

Marvin Walsh and Ron Nelson display Parker’s ISO 9001 Certifications.

Marvin Walsh and Ron Nelson display Parker’s ISO 9001 Certifications.

 

We have a strong team of degreed Engineers, who excel at helping our customers define the scope of supply and execute the projects. To raise the profile of the projects and key milestones, the team decided to complement our computerized manufacturing processes by placing the key features and deadlines on the “big whiteboard” you saw. The team celebrates hitting the milestones and “seeing” the custom work being delivered to customers. Here are some examples of recent successes.

  • Automotive Industry - Magnum refrigerated air dryer with Cold Coalescer, tube and shell heat exchangers, customer specified drains, customer specified air connection orientation, dual semi-hermetic compressors with staged unloading and oversized heat exchangers to meet customer specified pressure drop.
  • Oil & Gas Market - Heatless Twin Tower desiccant dryer, -60 C pressure dew point (PDP), 1/8" corrosion allowance, stainless steel inlet piping, corrosion resistant exterior paint, B31.3 piping (design to meet CRN & ASME), x-ray welds, quantity 6 fabricated filters per dryer.
  • Power Generation Market - Heatless Twin Tower desiccant dryer, explosion proof (NEMA 7) outdoor application, panel heater and heat trace.
  • Food and Beverage Market - Heatless Twin Tower desiccant dryer, complete unit 304 stainless steel.
  • Oil & Gas Market - Heatless Twin Tower desiccant dryer, -100 F PDP, oil field construction, cyclic tank design and dryer fatigue analysis.

 

hydrostatic testing for ASME Certification on mist eliminator filtration systems.

Parker’s FAF Division conducts hydrostatic testing for ASME Certification on mist eliminator filtration systems

 

Please describe your new product development test laboratory.

We are very proud of our research and development laboratory. It’s providing fantastic support to our engineering group and to our new product development efforts. We can test both dryers and filters for all kinds of key performance indicators including pressure dew point, pressure drop, and energy consumption at full and partial loads. This allows us to support our customers’ needs for reliable dew points at the lowest energy costs and provide documentation like the CAGI data sheets documenting dew point and power consumption at full and partial loads.

 

Parker Testing Laboratory

Product performance testing at the new testing laboratory.

 

We have “hot boxes” where we can test dryer’s performance for high ambient temperatures. We can test dryers using all types of voltages for export markets and unique conditions (115v, 230v, and 460 volt, single and three phase). We also test chiller performance in the laboratory. In the near future we plan to expand the filter housing and element testing capabilities of the laboratory.

 

packaging protecting an externally heated desiccant dryer before shipment.

Inspecting the robust packaging protecting an externally heated desiccant dryer
before shipment.

 

How is your chiller business developing?

As you know, Parker does a significant volume of business with standard chillers. Over the past few years, an exciting development has been our custom-chiller work happening here in Lancaster (NY) for OEM’s. One thing OEM’s are interested in is Parker’s global reach and ability to service chillers and dryers around the world. For example, we’ve conducted on-site service training and placed key service parts in stock at key global facilities - in addition to the six Parker Service Centers mentioned before.

 

Thank you for your time.

 

For more information on Parker, visit www.parker.com/faf or www.parker.com/finitefilter

 

To read similar articles on Compressed Air Treatment Technology, visit www.airbestpractices.com/technology/air-treatment