[stevehull]

Idlemind,

Interesting perspectives on rotary vs reciprocating compressors.

My intuition is the opposite as a reciprocating compressor has to overcome the piston inertia at each cycle. The rotary has no such issue as it always spins in one direction.

Secondly, I have been told that rotary compressors "seal in" early after initial use and that the leakage around the vanes gets less and less over time until it is virtually unmeasurable. Perhaps this is wishful thinking on someone's part . . . .

But the inertia issue is real and somewhere in a class many years (decades?) ago, I calculated the amount of advantage a rotary compressor had over a reciprocating one just due to inertia. It was surprisingly large.

Thoughts?


Steve