Industrial Energy Savings    

End Uses

Bottler Best Practices in California
By Creg Fenwick and Kyle Harris, Accurate Air Engineering
Bottling companies and breweries, in California, are benefiting from a three-step system assessment process aimed at reducing the electrical consumption of their compressed air systems. The three-step process reduces compressed air demand in bottling lines by focusing on open blowing and idle equipment, and then improves the specic power (reducing the energy consumption) of the air compressors.
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Success Stories at BC Hydro
By Ron Marshall for the Compressed Air Challenge®
BC Hydro is a sponsor of Compressed Air Challenge and one of two Canadian utilities represented on the Board of Directors. BC Hydro’s Power Smart Compressed Air Optimization program helps customers assess how their air system is working, helps with project implementation costs and provides for onsite training of plant personnel. The following profiles tell how two of their customers discovered excellent savings through the application of low cost measures.
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PET Bottle Blowing Efficiency
Compressed Air Best Practices® Interviewed Dean Smith, iZ Systems.
The PET industry is in a state of flux right now. A number of new bottle blowing facilities are being brought on-line. They are in the “discovery” phase right now as they realize how challenging the required compressed air systems are to manage – from an energy efficiency standpoint. The average high-volume stretch blow molder (SBM) working with PET usually has 2,000 to 4,000 horsepower of installed air compressors with the related energy costs running between $1 to $4 million per year. This typically represents 35-40% of the facilities’ total energy bill.
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Measuring Energy Savings at Verallia
By Rod Smith, Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine
Compressed Air Best Practices interviewed Gregory Rhames, Asset Reliability Manager/Energy Manager at Verallia. As background, Verallia is the packaging division of Saint-Gobain. Verallia employs 15,500 people globally and makes about 25 billion glass bottles and jars each year. We employ 350 people at Madera where we produce about 1 million wine, champagne and sake bottles per day.
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Energy-Savings at Milk, Cheese, and Ice Cream Plants
By Ron Marshall for the Compressed Air Challenge®
Compressed air system refinements have cut operating costs at a Milk Plant located in Winnipeg Manitoba, Canada by 62%, for annual savings of nearly $30 000. The improvements were made following a compressed air audit that recommended consolidating two compressed air systems into one, installing a variable speed drive compressor, and making a handful of additional basic improvements.
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Tolko’s Paper Mill and Saw Mill Save $215,000 per year
By Ron Marshall, Manitoba Hydro
Power Smart® efficiency measures for compressed air systems at Tolko’s paper mill and sawmill at The Pas are saving the company more than $125,000 a year.  
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New AODD Pump Controls Reduce Compressed Air Consumption
By Mark McCourt and Dean Thornberry, IDEX AODD
Air-operated double-diaphragm (AODD) pumps are known for their positive attributes of handling fluids that are heavily laden with solids, abrasive materials, shear sensitive liquids (paints and coatings) and the ability to pump soft solids without damaging the product. They are also popular because they are lightweight, portable and easy to use due to their pneumatic power.
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Three Demand-Side Projects at a Pharmaceutical Plant
By Hank Van Ormer, Air Power USA
This pharmaceutical plant spends $265,100 annually on energy to operate the compressed air system at their facility. This figure will increase as electric rates are projected to be raised from their current average of 7.7 cents /kWh. The set of projects identified in the compressed air system assessment could reduce these energy costs by $139,300 per year (52%).
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Industrial Sandblasting – Where Does All the Air Go?
By Don van Ormer & Scott van Ormer, Air Power USA
“Sandblasting” is one of the oldest and most used methods of metal treatment. Various abrasive materials may be loaded manually or by a vacuum system pulling the “grit” from a storage tank. A control valve then operates with the compressed air (bypassing the vacuum pump), being forced into the tank pressurizing the receiver. When the high pressure compressed air goes out the discharge line, it pulls the appropriate amount of grit with it to effectively impinge against the targeted metal surface.
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Mattei Dresses Up a Textile Compressed Air System
By Compressed Air Best Practices®
This textile plant uses compressed air in their knitting, sewing, and dye house operations and needed a system designed for the significant fluctuations in demand. Compressed air demand profiles were placed into four segments; 1st shift peak demand and minimum demand, and 2nd shift peak demand and minimum demand.
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Energy Saving Opportunities in Blowoff Applications
By Ted Clayton, Kaman Industrial Technologies
Assessing payback on engineered air nozzle and blower upgrades There are a variety of means factories can use to remove or “blowoff” moisture from a package. Open tubes or drilled pipe are often viewed as simple low-cost methods. However, there are considerable drawbacks to these approaches, most notably – increased operating expense. While they may be convenient and inexpensive in the short term, these approaches often cost 5-7 times more to operate than preferred alternatives.
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