Air Curtain Sensor – Let’s know it!
Hi! before we dwell into what an Air-Curtain Sensor is, lets talk a little bit about the main product Air Curtain, lets try to figure out a few questions like, What is an Air Curtain? How does it works? Are they really effective? etc. etc.
So first things first.
What is an Air Curtain?
These basically are a fan-powered device that creates an invisible air barrier or wall over the doorway hence separating efficiently two different environments, without limiting the access of the people or vehicles. So simple isn’t it.
Know Your Air Curtain
The air screen which is formed is quite efficient in energy saving, and can reduce heating and cooling cost by up to 80%, at the same time it protects the internal climate, making people inside feel more comfortable.
It keeps the atmosphere clean from pest and insects, dust, airborne, pollution, smells, odours and stops draughts and cold or hot air entrance.
Now, How does it works?
Generally the air entering through the inlet grille, is compressed by internal fans and forced thought an air outlet, which is directed at the open doorway. The air is filtered before being compressed, filter protects the interior components (heat exchanger, fans, electronics, etc.) from dust and particles. The fans can be direct or belt driven. The most frequently used types are centrifugal, axial and cross-flow.
Heated air curtains have a coil (electric, hot/chilled water, steam, indirect or direct gas, direct expansion, etc.) to heat or cool the jet. Heating is used to avoid people feeling a cold jet of air when crossing the doorway and also to heat the volume of air coming in at the entrance.
Having gone through the working, lets check some data and see if its really effective or not?
The following advanced Computational Fluid Dynamics CFD diagrams made by UPC (Polytechnic University of Catalunya) shows clearly the efficiency of air curtains. The surface of next diagram is divided in two parts (at X=2): left side is considered as inside and right side as outside, in the inside wall one heater is connected.
So comparing both the figures we can see that studies and tests have proven that these are effective. When an efficient air curtain is well installed it save lots of energy and at the same time the entrance areas remain climate protected, comfortable and free of draughts, insects, odours, etc.
Important Note: Poorly designed machines, wrong selected units (less powerful) or inadequate installation will loose part or even all the advantages and became worse than unprotected door.
So now, after dwelling into what an Air Curtain is, lets now get to know what an Air-Curtain Sensors is all about.
Above we saw how installing properly we can save up to 80% energy, in some scenarios we see where there is a very high footfall, so they might be required to be kept ON for the entire time, generally these machines are designed for long hour usage, but there are also some places where footfall is not too frequent, so unnecessarily keeping them ON will only add up on your monthly electricity bills. So if we can get something, by use of which we can operate them only when it is needed, would be such a great thing.
Here an Air-Curtain sensor comes into role. These sensors are connected to the door and only when some one opens the door they will operate. thus helping us same even more.
Most common Air-Curtain Sensors are which operates by opening and closing of the door, apart from this in few applications motion sensors are also used to control air curtains.
Door sensors are generally operated through Magnetic Reed Switches, where magnet is connected to the moving door and wired reed is connected to the fixed frame of the door. Whenever the door is opened Air Curtain is operated and it gets ON, and when the door is closed it gets OFF.
By itself Air Curtain is a machine that saves an incredible amount of energy, and by installing a sensor to it, the savings are only going to get doubled.
Advantages of Air Curtain Sensor
These sensors comes with a host of advantages, these are like some more extra topping over the pizza, as Air Curtain by itself is an energy saving device, installing a sensor over it further increases the savings. Few advantages are listed below :
- These are a very effective product for energy saving.
- Sensor switches ON the Air Curtains only when required.
- When not in use they remains in switched OFF mode.
- Installing these increases the life of an Air Curtain.
- These sensors can be used with any make and model of Air Curtain.
- These comes in both Single Door and Double Door options.
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