Can anyone recommend a small air dryer/filter for a shop air compressor? Air compressor is 6 CFM, 120 volts. Used daily, but usually only for short periods. I see desiccant, membrane, and refrigerant dryers online. I’m assuming a desiccant dryer would be best for this application, but prices are all over the place. Some of the combination desiccant dryers cost as much as a refrigerant dryer. How long does desiccant last under these circumstances?
If you have lines run in your shop make sure you have drops or traps.
The expensive desiccant rigs are usually double units that regen one column and run the other then swap.
Get on some of the CNC Plasma cutter forums. They have plans for home built units and lots of information on various styles of air dryers.
What you are doing with the air, makes the most difference on what kind of air dryer you need. If you're running air tools and filing tires, is totally different from running a plasma table or painting. Saying you don't run it for very often and short periods of time doesn't mean near as much as what you need to do with the air. I've used the small (coffee can sized) paper filled canister one on a portable plasma cutter 110v, and it worked okay, in that it caught most of the water. It would suffer if it was super wet out (humid/rainy weather), I think the papers kind of get saturated and couldn't take any more. I've painted with just a water separator can and a small inline (racquetball) sized inline filter- but I'm not fancy car painting- just equipment painting. I own a 110v refrigerated air dryer I was always going to hook up for painting and plasma cutter, but I'm just lazy enough that it hasn't happened yet. Its only like 1/2" input and output and I didn't want to restrict my main shop air with it, and want to put it on its own little sector. I do have drops and traps on my main shop air lines.
Mostly used for tire repairs. I recently inherited a bunch of air tools and am considering plumbing the shop with air. Currently don’t plasma cut or paint but would like to have clean, dry air available in case I added this in the future. Thanks. I did find some useful information in some of the old threads.