Are you worried about water or oil?

A single (good) water trap, along with proper plumbing, should take care of it. But....

Proper plumbing implies that the piping from the compressor goes up near the ceiling and across over some distance, and there is a down leg from there that will trap some water (and oil). Downstream from that you have a water trap and pressure regulator.

Look for some diagrams and hardware at tptools.com that will help out with this.

Thing is, the biggest aid to eliminating moisture in the lines is to have a compressor that doesn't run continuously, and runs cool. 2 stage compressors with large tanks go a long way to achieving this.

There's more, and other things you can do, but this is a start.

 

Another option if moisture is a problem is one of these....

http://www.ebay.com/itm/General-Pne...rated-Compressed-Air-Dryer-/152571153805?hash=item2385f30d8d:g:FyQAAOSw-3FZMfMc

A good oil/desiccant filter is important too.... followed by a filter for particulate matter.......

Many old commercial buildings use pneumatic controls to operate their HVAC systems.... The first componant is the refrigerated air dryer followed by an inline oil filter followed by a filter to catch particulates.

 

Rick nailed it

:anim_25:

 

Dessicant snake is only needed for painting. I use one as a final defense in my paint booth. Not needed for air tools.

Don

 

Agreed, Rick nailed it, described much of my shop system. I use schedule 80 piping as it more than exceeds the specs needed for a shop and being plastic avoids corrosion from dis-similar metals. I still use a small disposable filter at the gun when spraying paint. I also have a second water/oil separator after the 'long slow rise high piping with drain and modified"p" trap ' at my union fitted wall mounted sections which run along tree of the four walls in my shop. Clean, dry, oil free air is best, better for tools, air gun, spray guns and paint.

 

I respectfully disagree. I would never use any PVC pipe on an air system, even schedule 80! I have seen the results of a PVC system that failed, and it was not pretty. Oil in the air will slowly over time, weaken the pipe, and the PVC will naturally become brittle over time. Because the compressed air acts as a giant spring, when the pipe shatters, as it surely will eventually, it will spray shards of sharp PVC like a small bomb. It does not act like this under water pressure since water is not compressible and does not store up this massive potential energy, like a compressed gas does. A good buddy of mine put in PVC air lines, and about 5 years down the road, he was cleaning nuts and bolts on a wire wheel. The grinder grabbed a nut and hurled it across the shop and hit his air line dead center! Luckily, he was over 10 feet away, but was still showered with PVC shards. Every code in the country specifically prohibits the use of PVC pipe for good reason. There are a couple of specific ABS formulations that are approved for compressed air, but they will be prominently identified as such


A good piping design should be as Rick described, but steel or copper pipe should be used. After my drip leg, I have a refrigerated dryer, which will lower the dew point of the compressed air to about 35 degrees F This tap then goes into the shop to feed all the outlets except for my painting tap, which has a Desiccant dryer followed by a filter. This takes the air down to a -40 degrees dew point. The refrigerated dryer gets the bulk of the moisture, and I only have to regenerate the desiccant dryer a couple of times a year. It is overkill, but this is the way most paint shops are set up. My compressor sits in my other garage and the copper air line runs underground from the other shop, and the trip underground condenses out quite a bit of moisture before it ever gets to the dryer. I have to drain this drip leg trap at least a couple of times a week, and the refrigerant dryer is self draining as it accumulates water.