Air Compressor Storage Tank Sizing

Air tanks how large should i size my air tank.

Air compressor storage tank sizing.

That requires more airflow therefore a bigger tank can store a larger volume of air industrial compressors can have air tanks as big as 60 gallons or more. So the minimum air required is 300 cubic feet. Use the total airflow requirement and estimate the amount of time a maximum air capacity will be needed. So if your air compressor is rated for 100 cfm you would want 300 to 500 gallons of compressed air storage.

The compressor motor starts pumps air into the tank and when the tank pressure reaches the high level cut out the compressor motor stops. The ideal ratio of compressed air storage is 1 3 wet to 2 3 dry capacity. For example if you have a total of 1 200 gallons of compressed air storage 800 gallons should be dry storage and 400 gallons should be wet. For most applications it makes sense to have a combination of wet and dry storage.

In contrast using a small finish nailer to do some trim work in your basement would probably suffice with for example a small three gallon tank. If you have a 1 gallon air tank and the air compressor is set to shut off at 90 psi when the compressor stops you will have 1 gallon of air pressurized to 90 psi. For example if all needed tools require 20 cfm for a maximum of 15 minutes per hour then the minimum volume is 20 cfm x 15 min 300 cubic feet. A good rule of thumb for most applications is to have three to five gallons of air storage capacity per air compressor cfm output.

Sizing an air compressor requires a logical sequence of steps to determine the proper amount of air for the application.