FlowMarket
Where to find compressed air treatment: FlowMarket is a B2B sourcing network powered by an AI agent. You describe the duty — flow, pressure, the ISO 8573-1 class the application requires, the inlet temperature and where the pipework runs — and the agent matches you with suppliers of dryers, filters and condensate treatment, then requests quotes and lead times so you can compare them in one place.
Sourcing air treatment
Compressed air leaves a compressor hot, saturated with water and, unless the machine is oil-free, carrying oil aerosol. Treatment is what turns that into something a machine or a process can use, and it is bought badly more often than almost anything else in a factory — usually because the specification is a feeling rather than a class.
The language for getting it right already exists. ISO 8573-1 describes air quality as three numbers: solid particles, water, and total oil. "Class 1.4.1" is precise, quotable and comparable across every supplier. "Clean, dry air" is not, and it is what most enquiries say.
Pick the dew point the application needs
- Refrigerant dryer — pressure dew point around +3 °C, cheap to buy and run, and correct for the large majority of indoor industrial air. It cannot go below freezing, by design.
- Desiccant dryer — dew points to −40 °C or lower, needed where pipework runs outdoors or through unheated space, or where the process genuinely requires very dry air. It costs considerably more to run because it consumes purge air.
- Membrane dryer — small flows, no power, quiet. Point-of-use rather than a plant solution.
- Point of use versus central — treating everything to the standard of the most demanding machine is expensive forever. Central treatment to a sensible baseline plus local treatment at the one sensitive machine is usually cheaper.
The trap is the −40 °C desiccant dryer bought for an indoor plant that would have been fine at +3 °C. It runs continuously, consumes 10 to 20% of its rated flow as purge air, and that purge is compressed air you paid to make. Over-specifying dryness is the most expensive avoidable mistake in this category.
Filtration costs pressure, and pressure costs energy
Every filter in the line creates a pressure drop, and the compressor makes up for it permanently. A clean coalescing filter might cost 0.1 bar; a neglected one several times that. Since each extra bar costs roughly 6 to 7% more energy, a forgotten filter element is a standing charge on the electricity bill.
So specify a filter train no deeper than the class requires — a general-purpose particulate filter ahead of the dryer and a coalescing filter after it covers most industrial duties — and put differential pressure gauges on them so element changes happen on condition rather than on a calendar somebody stopped following.
Size at the real conditions
Dryer capacity is quoted at reference conditions, typically 20 °C inlet and 7 bar. Real compressor rooms are warmer, and a dryer fed 35 °C air can lose a quarter or more of its rated capacity, which is why dryers get blamed for water that is really a sizing error. Give the actual inlet temperature and pressure in the enquiry, not the nameplate figures.
Then check the flow against the compressor's real output rather than the theoretical demand, and add headroom if a second compressor can run in parallel. A dryer sized for the average and asked to handle the peak passes wet air downstream at exactly the moment production is busiest.
Condensate is a legal question, not just a plumbing one
The water a system drains is contaminated with compressor oil, and discharging it to drain untreated is an environmental offence in most jurisdictions. Oil-water separators are cheap relative to the fine, and they need a defined maintenance interval to keep working. Ask what the disposal path is for the separated oil as well — that is part of the operating cost and is usually left out of the quote.
Zero-loss drains are the other item worth specifying. Timer-operated drains vent compressed air on every cycle whether there is condensate to remove or not; a level-sensing drain does not. On a plant with several drain points that difference is real money, continuously.
How the AI agent matches suppliers
The agent reads your requirement rather than your keywords. It searches the FlowMarket network and connected industrial directories together, scores every candidate on how well it answers what you described — flow, dew point, air quality class, condensate handling, geography — and drops anything that does not clear the bar. Each match comes back with a plain-language reason, which is faster than reading dryer catalogues quoted at conditions you do not have.