Drying Compressed Air To Clean Bottles

[Pistol Pete]

Hey Guys - For anyone who uses compressed air to clean their bottles before filling, what are you using to dry the air so as to not get moisture in the bottles?

I've been looking at the different filter/dryer options available and they all seem to have chemicals "known to the state of California to cause cancer and birth defects" so I'm a little bit wary of using them for fear of them leaving some sort of trace amounts of lead/chemical residue on the inside of my bottles.

I'm not sure if that is a valid concern or if I am I just being overly paranoid about the whole thing? Thanks everyone

PS: I'm only using an oil-less compressor so my only concern is the moisture

[daveflintstone]

I use a simple in line moisture filter you can get anywhere (Home Depot, etc.) and then a Hankinson HF1 filter. IMHO, your concern should not be just moisture, even with an oil less compressor.

I get dry, clean smelling air, free of any particulates.

[meerkat]

There are 3 ways (that I know of) to remove water from air. These are compression, cooling and chemical absorbtion.

The more you compress the air the less water it can hold. It is like a sponge that is squeezed. If you are going to drain water from your system anywhere, do it at the highest pressure point. Cooling the air also decreases its water-carrying capacity. We see this every day when water drips from the air conditioning unit. Chemical absorption is done typically with dessicants, but I have never used this type of dryer for a breathing air supply so I cannot comment on your toxicity concerns.

To get dry air for your bottles use a filter (as recommended by Dave) at the highest pressure point, and cool the compressed air before the filter if possible. The flip side of this is that if you can heat the air before it goes into the bottles it will be less likely to have droplets and will be more effective in drying the bottles.

[Pistol Pete]

Thanks guys

[mendodistilling]

Another thing to thing about is constantly draining your tanks to remove moisture from tanks.

[Rickdiculous]

For removing moisture from your tanks you can get an electric blow out valve that you can set to release moisture at varying intervals. It will take a huge amount of pressure off of your filter or inline drier.