Filtration & Drying

The market for high pressure regenerative desiccant dryers is small and specialised, requiring a high level of customised engineering combined with highly skilled small batch manufacture. At L B Bentley Ltd we have spent over thirty years developing these qualities.

Bentley Dryers are frequently packaged together with up to six stages of pre and after filtration, of our own manufacture, to meet the highest standards of air/gas quality. They are built to give many years of reliable and safe operation under the most demanding working conditions.

Applications where Bentley Dryer Packages are extensively used include:

• Breathing Air
• Defence Standard 'Pure Air' for thermal imaging
• Medical and special gases
• Air Blast Circuit Breakers
• Large capacity high pressure dryers up to 2700 m³/hr have been supplied for use during wind tunnel testing
• Ships systems
• Waveguide dryers
• Dockside services

PRINCIPLE OF OPERATION

Fully automatic regenerative desiccant dryers working on the ‘Pressure Swing’ (Heatless) method of regeneration, are a highly reliable and economical way to dry compressed air and other gases to dewpoints below -70°C measured at atmospheric pressure. The dryers continuously dry compressed air by using two identical adsorption vessels each filled with a desiccant to adsorb water vapour. While one vessel is on-stream drying the compressed air, the other is off-stream being regenerated. The vessels are alternated on and off-stream resulting in a continuous supply of dry air downstream.

The method of regeneration is by swinging the pressure in the adsorption vessel from the high system pressure to a low pressure just above ambient. The desiccant is unable to retain the water at the lower pressure and gives it up to the purge air which passes through the bed at low pressure in the opposite direction to the on-stream flow. The purge air, which is a small percentage of the system air, has already been dried at high pressure. Expansion of this air to the low pressure side through a factory set orifice causes it to become very dry. The very dry purge air regenerates the desiccant as it takes moisture away and carries it out of the dryer via the silencer.

For more information click on the following:

• FEATURES
• DETAILED SEQUENCE OF OPERATION
• DIMENSIONS AND WEIGHTS
• FLOW RATES & PRESSURES