The following article compares the existing  methods used in booths to accelerate drying of waterborne paint systems. It is from California Pulse a corporation which I feel has one of the best systems available.

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Waterborne Paint Drying Technology

Existing Systems
There are many different water borne paint drying systems on the market today. The goal is to create turbulence and to speed up airflow on the surface of the vehicle. Some systems use tube axial fans while other systems use pressurized plenums with nozzles to create turbulence on the surface of the vehicle.

Venturi systems use compressed air from the shop’s air compressor. Producing compressed air is very expensive and the air is cold. They have to be moved frequently to make sure they are not in the painter's way during the spray process. They have to be repositioned and set up for every job. The only advantage they have is that they are very inexpensive to buy. However, because they use compressed air, operational costs of these systems are high.

Fan based systems use tube axial fans to create a turbulent air flow inside the spray booth. Some are placed on the ceiling some are placed in the upper corners of the spray booth. The placement is important in order to pull the hottest air possible in the booth. The problem is that they move a great volume of air as a wide air stream. They create circular airflow in the spray booth between the ceiling and the floor. As the air flow reaches a critical speed, these systems start stirring up dry overspray on the floor of the booth.

Since overspray is airborne inside the spray booth during the Spray cycle this dust tends to settle on any structure inside the booth. The fan assemblies provide a prime area for overspray to settle on. When the fans are turned on, the settled overspray gets airborne and the dust is blown directly onto the painted surfaces.

Nozzle based systems are connected to a secondary blower for air supply. They are placed on the walls including the corners of the spray booth. Some claim to achieve turbulence by crashing a vertical (primary) airflow to the horizontal (secondary) air flow of the nozzles. However, this is an extremely inefficient way to create turbulence. This method slows down both primary and the secondary airflow of the paint booth.

Most systems have user adjustable nozzles for aiming. Adjustable nozzles can be quite cumbersome to work with. There is a minimum of 32 nozzles in a system. If the painter has to adjust these or even fine-tune the nozzles before painting a new vehicle, there will be a great loss of time. Besides these nozzles can become misaligned if a person or object bumps into them. Air flow from a misaligned nozzle can either stir up overspray or interfere with the air flow of the other nozzles.

The California Pulse system is designed with stationary nozzles. They only have to be adjusted once, during installation.

To create superb turbulence, we incorporated two patent pending technologies into our system: twist inserts and a pulse generator.

First, we twist the airflow in a cork screw fashion as the air leaves the nozzle.

Nozzle With Twist Insert

The second component is the pulsing of the airflow. As the front of the high pressure pulse contacts the vehicle, the air tumbles downwards pulling low relative humidity air right onto the surface of the paint.

Blower With Pulse Generator

California Pulse, Inc. | Ph: 1-909-331-5593 | sales@californiapulse.com