Air speed in dry curing chamber

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Blackriver
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Air speed in dry curing chamber

Post by Blackriver » Sun Mar 06, 2011 23:08

I am trying to find a computer fan for my curing chamber. In my book "The art of making fermented sausages" they put a emphasis on fan speed. Example .8 m/sec. I found a 3 inch fan that produces 34 cfm. I want to calculate the fan speed of this fan. I found a website that does that.

http://www.comairrotron.com/airflow_calc.shtml

I plugged the value of 34 cfm in and the diameter of the circular duct which is 3 inches. The calculator came up with a value of .88 m/sec or 2 mph. This seems like the right fan for me. Is this the correct way to calculate air speed? If not could someone point me in the right direction on how to calculate the air speed? I don't want to make the mistake of having too much airflow or not enough in my chamber and ruin my sausages.
ssorllih
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Post by ssorllih » Sun Mar 06, 2011 23:46

The .8m/sec is rather ambigous because they don't say where you measure it. If your drying chamber is one cubic meter and the air velocity in the duct is .8 m/sec it is going to be substantially lower among the hanging sausages. 34 cu ft is about 1 cubic meter so you can figure one air change per minute. Being certain of having uniform air circulation is also very important. The corners could suffer from poor air flow. Multiple fans could help. I scavange mine from discarded computer towers.
I put three into my 30 foot sail boat to keep the air fresh. they are driven by a dedicated solar panel and run only when the sun shines but they keep the boat smelling fresh.
Ross- tightwad home cook
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