Industrial Utility Efficiency

Pneumatics

Festo Smart Pneumatics and AI Solutions Spur Gains Toward Sustainability

By Mike Grennier, Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine

If there was ever a place where manufacturers can save energy using compressed air and make measurable gains toward sustainability, it’s with pneumatics that power a seemingly infinite variety of machines and processes.

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Improving the Efficiency of Pumping Systems through Pump System Optimization

By Matthew Derner, Manager, Business Development, Pump System Programs, The Hydraulic Institute

The U.S. Department of Energy’s 2002 Motor Market Assessment established that pumping systems offer the greatest optimization potential of all types of fluid systems, with potential savings up to 75% and an average net savings of 20.1%. In this article, The Hydraulic Institute defines the steps for a pump system optimization.

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Improve Process Efficiency and Reduce Energy Use with Compressed Air Monitoring

By Hendrik Priemer, Product Manager IIoT Applications, Machine Automation, Emerson

Without compressed air monitoring, up to 30% of the compressed air generated goes to waste. This waste occurs for several reasons, including leaks caused by failures at joints and tubes, exposure to vibration and normal component wear, and the suboptimization of machines and devices. Continuous monitoring capabilities allow operators to detect leaks and other anomalies in their early stages. By addressing pneumatic issues before they can grow, companies can reduce compressed air use by 20% to 30%.

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Food Safety Design Tips for Pneumatic Systems

By Steve Bain, Industry Segment Manager Food & Beverage, Festo US

Current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMPs) under FSMA CFR Title 21 117.40 is the cornerstone of this food safety effort. Title 21 details the cleanability and cross contamination standards that plants must meet so that food is deemed safe. The following are tips for updating existing pneumatic systems in food and packaging and what to look for when purchasing new systems.

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Improving Sustainability Through Compressed Air and Utilities Monitoring

By Dr. Michael Britzger, Senior Manager, IIoT Engineering & Innovation, and Nils Beckmann, Global Director Engineering Intelligent Automation & Solutions for EMERSON Machine Automation

Utilities monitoring paired with machine learning models can reliably predict anomalies, prompting action that can prevent waste and optimize resource use.

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Five Decades of Innovation at Festo USA

By Roderick Smith, Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine

The history of Festo began in 1925 in Germany. Festo USA was founded on March 15th, 1972 in Port Washington on Long Island, with the focus of being a full-line supplier of pneumatics – a focus we continue with today.

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Three Ways To Make Packaging Lines More Sustainable

By Emerson

Sustainability is a high priority for today’s consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies. Driven by environmental responsibility, government regulations and customer preferences, CPGs are actively seeking ways to decarbonize their packaging lines and use eco-friendly packaging materials. Many have started monitoring the energy consumption of their equipment in real time and upgraded critical areas of their packaging processes using two key technologies: pneumatics and ultrasonic welding.

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Solving Predictive Maintenance and Sustainability Challenges Through Digital Transformation

By Amit Patel, Marketing Manager, Digital Transformation – Industrial Automation, Emerson

The industrial internet of things (IIoT) and industry 4.0 have digitally transformed the way facilities operate, enabling processes that are smarter and more efficient than ever before. But digital transformation is still new to some and may seem abstract or ambiguous. In actuality, it’s quite the opposite.

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Three Real-World Applications for Pneumatics and IIoT

By Enrico De Carolis, Emerson

Industrial operations and manufacturers using pneumatics have access to more Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) technology than ever before, from position sensors on cylinders to system flow sensors and edge gateways that operate independently from the machine controller with globally accepted communication protocols.

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Smart Monitoring: The Power Behind Pneumatics Productivity

By Emerson and Motion Industries

In manufacturing and packaging facilities that rely on pneumatics, there’s a four-letter word worse than virtually any other: leak. Unidentified air leakage and unexpected maintenance in pneumatic systems are significant sources of revenue and productivity loss but identifying the cause of leakages and preventing unforeseen downtime is typically a challenge.

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Unilever Ice Cream Plant Reduces Compressed Air Consumption with Pneumatic Energy Efficiency Module

By Randy DeForge, Festo

Electricity and compressed air play an important role in the thermal and kinetic processes for everything from mixing and extruding the ingredients, deep-freezing to -13°F (-25°C), dipping into various chocolate coatings through to final packaging. Energy efficiency is therefore right at the top of Unilever’s list of priorities. As part of the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan, this global corporation has succeeded in saving more than $186 million in energy costs from efficiency improvements in production alone since 2008.

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Understanding and Treating an Industrial Static Problem

By Daniel Rebennack, SMC

In this article, we discuss problems associated with static electricity in industrial manufacturing operations and how to effectively address them. At the atomic level, materials have a balance of positively charged protons in the nucleus and negatively charged electrons in the shell. Balance requires the same number of each. A static charge occurs when that balance shifts due to the loss or gain of one or more electrons from the atom or molecule. The primary mechanism for this loss or gain, among several possibilities, is friction.

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How to Keep Reverse Pulse Dust Collectors Operating Efficiently and Reliably

By Ron Marshall, Marshall Compressed Air Consulting

Reverse pulse type dust collectors often represent a challenge to compressed air energy efficiency, and sometimes throw a wrench into the works by causing huge air pressure fluctuations, high transient flows and just plain large leaks. This article discusses this type of dust collector, often installed in food processing plants, and gives some real-life examples of problematic installations. Some suggested measures are mentioned to ensure your dust collectors keep running in a trouble-free manner.

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Don’t Overlook Tubing Volume with Manifold-Mounted Pneumatic Valves To Conserve Energy

By John Martin, SMC Corporation of America

The advent of manifold-mounted, plug-in pneumatic valves has been a boon for machine builders. It allows them to mount complete valve packages in a safe and secure location on a machine. Using a D-sub connector, serial interface module, or similar single-point wiring system, all of the electrical control outputs can feed into one location on the manifold, greatly simplifying the wiring.

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Safety: Food-Compliant Pneumatics for Fully Aseptic Juice Filling Machine

By Aventics

Machines for filling milk or juice must often work around the clock. Given the critical importance of uptime, Elopak opted for Aventics food-compliant pneumatics when developing its E-PS120A - the first fully aseptic filling machine for gable top packaging. With an output of up to 12,000 cartons per hour, disruptions and downtime are not welcome with the aseptic filling machine.

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A Pulse Jet Dust Collector Optimization Study

By Russell Morine, Compressed Air Systems Evaluation Specialist, The Baker Group

A flour based frozen foods manufacturer orders a compressed air efficiency audit. The audit establishes the cost of compressed air at $0.27/1000 cubic feet. The study finds the 116 pulse jet dust collectors represent the greatest opportunity for compressed air demand reduction and energy cost savings. A dust collector optimization study/service is suggested and the customer agrees to proceed. In this facility, pulse jet dust collectors are used to filter dust from raw materials entering the plant, for conveying and mixing of ingredients, and for the final packaged finished products leaving the plant.

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Optimizing Today’s Pneumatic Systems

By Bill Nevills, Certified Fluid Power Specialist, Valin Corporation

In the last ten years, the design of pneumatic systems has changed dramatically, mainly due to developments in the technologies that create them. Pneumatic manufacturers’ online tools for sizing components have evolved, the fieldbus systems are ever-changing, component designs are constantly improving, and network devices such as the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) have reshaped the industry. All these advances play a large role in optimizing the efficiency of pneumatic systems, but the age-old practice of routine maintenance must not be overlooked. This article will focus on proper air compressor sizing, proper pneumatic component sizing and predictable preventative maintenance.

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Addressing Three Compressed Air Quality Problems Found In Pneumatics

By Paul Craven

There are three essential ways to transmit power in heavy industry today: Mechanical, Electrical and Fluid Power. Under the umbrella of fluid power, you have hydraulics and pneumatics as the two fundamental technologies. Both use a form of fluid – hydraulics as a liquid and pneumatics as a gas, to transmit power from one location to another.

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Pneumatic vs. Electric Tool Calculations and Considerations

By Jerry Zolkowski, PE, CEM, Senior Engineer, Consumers Energy Business Solutions

Figuring out the energy savings for the switch from pneumatic to electric tools requires an estimate of energy use for each case. The effect of replacing a few tools in a large compressed air system may be too small to detect using power monitoring on the air compressors. However, it is still a good practice, and when part of a larger program to reduce air consumption, the combined efforts will amount to something measurable. Another positive aspect may be that reduced compressed air use frees up needed air compressor capacity.

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Lantech Case Erectors Engineered for Compressed Air Efficiency

By Mike Castelli, Director Global Business Development, Case Handling Products, Lantech

Energy, in all forms, has always been a key Lantech focus. It was, in fact, a key element of the core packaging problem the company’s founders set out to address. They saw an opportunity to capitalize on an inexpensive and under-used resource – stretch film – to displace a high materials cost and energy intensive way of unitizing pallet loads of products – shrink bagging.

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Machine Builders Optimize Pneumatic Circuit Tubing Volumes

By Jon Jensen, John Martin and Chris Latham, SMC USA

The advent of manifold mounted, plug-in pneumatic valves has been a boon for machine builders. It allows them to mount complete valve packages in a safe and secure location on a machine. Using a D-sub connector, serial interface module, or similar single-point wiring system, all of the electrical control outputs can feed into one location on the manifold, greatly simplifying the wiring. Plumbing issues are reduced, since a single air pressure line can be used to feed a common pressure gallery. The same advantage applies to the common exhaust gallery. No longer would both a plumber and an electrician be required to replace a valve, since any valve can be replaced without disturbing electrical connections or plumbing lines.

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Pneumatic Circuit Analysis for Energy Efficiency

By Clint Hodge, ASCO Numatics, EMERSON Industrial Automation

Currently, and for good reason, much attention is being focused on the conservation of energy. Compressed air, like electricity and gas, is an energy resource. It has often been referred to as the third utility. As with all energy sources, our global environment demands that it be conserved and used wisely.

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Assembly Machine Pneumatic Valve Retrofit for Energy Savings

By SMC Corporation of America

Responsible companies are looking at ways to not only reduce their energy consumption, but to make their production more efficient. This is a great general business practice, but how can you be sure that what you are doing has positively impacted the bottom line? More specifically, what can you implement that is repeatable as a best practice to save energy, and better yet, what can you implement that can be used to retrofit various machines across your floor? One solution is found in upgrading to modern pneumatic valves capable of saving energy by reducing compressed air consumption

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Plastic Molder Reduces $3.2 Million Energy Spend with Pneumatic Cylinder Retrofits

By Gary Wamsely, JoGar Energy Services

A plastics molding plant had engaged us to conduct an ‘on-site’ Energy Assessment of their facility. The annual ‘spend’ for electricity, natural gas, and water was about $3.2 million for this modern 275,000 square foot, fully air-conditioned facility. During the Review, several opportunities were identified and delineated in lighting, HVAC, process ventilation, the water systems and energy supply contracts. However, the most significant savings were in their compressed air system.

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Pneumatic and Vacuum Energy Optimization in OEM Machines

Thomas Dwyer, Product Manager- International Projects and John Bridges, Marketing Manager AVENTICS Corporation

Machine builders aiming to improve the energy efficiency of their machines tend to focus on using energy media other than pneumatics (typically electro-mechanical or hydraulic) since pneumatics, as traditionally applied, is viewed by some as inefficient due to factors like leakage and over-pressurization (i.e.: supplying a higher pressure in an actuator to accomplish a task which is endemic in practice). But they shouldn't, with its low cost of ownership, pneumatics when properly used remains a viable and many times preferable energy source for a given application. When generating and using compressed air, it's true that there are many places in the system where energy can be lost, however targeted measures within a comprehensive energy saving concept can prevent these losses and significantly reduce energy consumption at the machine level.

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Festo Optimizes Compressed Air Consumption at Volkswagen

By Sachin Kambli, Product Manager, Festo Corporation

Many passenger cars on roads in Germany contain efficiency concepts that make a considerable contribution to lowering emissions. Automotive manufacturers such as VW have gone even further than this, by applying efficiency strategies in their own value added chain. Because the benefits of pneumatics in automotive industry production processes have seen pneumatic actuation win over other drive technologies, efficient use of compressed air plays a key role in increasing energy efficiency.

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