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Types of air compressors

by Terry
(Abilene, Texas)

I know nothing about air compressors.

What's the difference in a 1 gallon compressor and a 5 gallon compressor?

Does that mean that it can just operate longer at a time?

Comments for
Types of air compressors

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Feb 23, 2008
Air Storage
by: Jim

Storage; any is better than none.

What your air is used for will run longer with the compressed air available in the larger storage tank.

Jan 24, 2008
About types of air compressors
by: Bill - Publisher

Hi Terry...nice to hear from Texas!

I share your frustration in trying to figure out compressors, that's one of the reasons I built this site.

A simple answer to your question is, the "gallonage" of a compressor normally refers to the size of the tank that the compressor compresses air into, not it's power.

Whoever decided to "size" compressed air tanks in gallons rather than XX number of cubic feet of compressed air at XX PSI didn't do any of us any favors.

So a 1 gallon compressor has a smaller tank than a 5 gallon compressor.

However, the information you provided doesn't tell us anything about the compressor itself.

Somewhere on the compressor, or in the books that came with it if some did, it should say how many horsepower the electric motor is, and how many CFM of compressed air (they may show it as SCFM, just to confuse you further) that this compressor will deliver at a certain pressure.

It will show you a higher CFM at a lower pressure, and a much lower pressure at the 90 PSI or so you'll probably want it to provide to run your tools, or whatever you are doing.

Let us know what that information is, will you?

Back to your question for a sec; the bigger the tank, the longer the compressor can deliver air to the application before the low pressure set point is reached, and the compressor motor turns on again, to bring the pressure back up to the high pressure cut out.

Here are a couple of links to pages on this site that will provide more info.

Sizing a compressor

What's SCFM


Hope this helps.

Bill

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