4,500 psi Air Compressor Systems

[Jim917]

For those of you with 4,500 psi bottles, how do you fill them? By this I mean do you fill each bottle directly off the compressor, bring it up to 4,500 and then move on to the next bottle OR do you have a prefilled cascade system that will fill X number of bottles before the compressor needs to kick in?

Interested in seeing what size bottles you have in the cascade and what size and make of compressor you are using to fill the cascade.

All replies appreciated!

Jim

[ff7134]

Our new system can do both, don't ask me the specifics or anything. But we can fill off a cascade or directly off the compressor.

[Jim917]

Originally posted by ff7134
Our new system can do both, don't ask me the specifics or anything. But we can fill off a cascade or directly off the compressor.

Thanks for the reply, but the specifics are exactly what I'm after.

[12TruckIrons]

If it helps any our compressor can do double duty as well. However we Fill our bank of 6 6000psi bottles with the compressor then fill the individual bottles off the bank. When they are low we top em back off with the compressor again. Our compressor is a mako and if I am not mistaken it can go up to 10,000 psi.

[protomkv]

We have two bauer compressors, one unit has 4 cylinders which are interconnected and each cylinder can be charged to 5000 psi. the other unit has 4 interconnected cylinders which can be charged to 6,000 psi. each compressor has 3 shielded fill stations and is therefore capable of refilling 3 cylinders at a time, when using the "bank" to fill the cylinders, one bank is opened and the fill pressure set to 4500 psi. each bank is opened and closed in succession until the required #s of cylinders are filled. Individual cylinders can also be filled directly from the compressor, in this instance it is not necessary to open the main banks. when filling directly from the compressor the fill rate is regulated to between 300 and 600 psi per minute, thus you cannot fill too quickly. Hope this is of use to you.

[distchief60b]

Our new system is the same way. We can fill off the cascade if we are in a hurry (2 bottles at a time) or off the compressor if the cascade gets low. All we have to do is set the regulator for the fill and one the compressor gets to 4500 the relief valve opens.

We are using 6000 PSI bottles on the cascade.

[Rescue101]

10,000psi?

Irons,I kinda doubt you got 10k if indeed your compressor is a Mako.5-6 maybe.We're speccing our new one now,a Bauer 10 hp 6000 with 4 6000Asme bottles for the cascade plus reusing 4-6 of our existing 4500's with a reducer for volume filling.We had a Mako before but it wasn't a really trouble free unit.Had a tendency to shake itself apart even with regular servicing(done by the dealer).With this setup we can load whatever we get into as we will be upgrading the paks on the Hazmat truck to 4.5's.There is a formula that can tell you how much compressor you need and how many cascade bottles.Depends on what and how many you want to fill.Jim,if you want the number of our dealer who figured out our system,E-mail me I can provide it,he services your area too. T.C.

[Resq14]

me too me too me too

TC - drop me a line also.

thunx!

[WAFD21]

Our truck carries 24 - 444 cubic feet (cf.) of 4,500 pounds per square inch (psi) air cylinders. An electric booster pump expands the capability of the system by boosting tank pressure from as low as 120 psi up to 4,500 psi. The unit is capable of refilling about 500 of the 4.5, high-pressure self contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) bottles. We have 4 hoses with pigtails to fill 8 bottles at a time. The 24 bottles are divided into 3 banks of 8. We have to manualy open each bank at a time, and once the bottles are as full as they will get from the banks, we flip a switch to turn on the compressor.



Our bottles
Our Controls and Compressor (right side)
The fill compartment
Our Air Supply Truck

[Bones42]

We replaced our Bauer with a Mako due to the lack of service from our local Bauer rep and the Mako bid was about $5000 less. Mako's are big in our area now, but Bauer's used to be...lot's of people changing for same reason....crappy service company.

Our unit has 4 6000lb ASME bottles for filling but can also fill direct from compressor. We normally only use the direct compressor fill to recharge our large bottles on our snorkle. Can't remember exact number, but somewhere between 13-15 hp. It can be adjusted to fill higher than 6000psi, but that is what we have it "topped" at since that is all we need. Normal SCBA filling is done from the storage bottles and we can refill any/all of the storage bottles while filling SCBA from the other storage bottles.

I'll try and email our specs and SOG's to you Jim917.

[Rescue101]

Reallly?

A Mako that can do over 6k?It's not listed on the fire side of their website,though I have no doubt it can be done.If we're still around in ten years let me know what you think of it then.We had one,and wouldn't buy another based on that experience but as you say a lot depends on who's going to take care of you.Their quality may have improved since we bought ours too but when you have bad experiences you generally don't go back for round 2.Any air beats no air,and we've been running off a straight Cascade for over 9 months.Don't even ask me my opinion of that especially when somebody goofed and equalised the system early on.T.C.

[UFD460]

compressors and cascades

go to breathingair.com..I used to work for them...they sell and service all makes of compressors and cascade systems...if you have 4500 psi air paks..if need 6000 psi cascade bottles..that will fill about 22 bottles...to go with that you need at least an 8 cfm air compressor to keep up with the 6000 psi cascade system...

[UFD460]

that is if you have 4 6000 psi cascade bottles

[Bones42]

101, I won't/can't say anything bad about the Bauer other than the service company. We had it around 15 years and bumped it up as much as we could, but it was not able to handle our switch to 4500's. Not the machines fault, just wasn't big enough. Course, when we bought it, it was "huge".

I can't find in my paperwork the 10k psi numbers, but they did not matter to us, only the 6k did. It is a 15HP system. What I like best about it is the 21CFM fill rate. By being able to fill only cascade bottles that are needed and fill SCBA's from the other cascades, I have yet to be unable to fill a SCBA. The recharge rate on the 6k bottles is impressive. Of course, I'm sure that can be done with all systems as long as they are spec'd and built that way, but we never had that ability before.

Again, nothing against Bauer, we always liked the compressor, they just did not stack up against the Mako in bidding.

Jim917, emailing you the stuff in case you wanted.

[Jim917]

Thanks

Thanks for all the thoughtful replies and insights into your experiences. The www.breathingair.com site has a load of good information on systems even if you're looking at other brands.

Jim