Industrial Utility Efficiency
An air compressor is synonymous with an electric heater – providing compressed air as a side effect. 85-90% of the electrical energy taken in by the air compressor is converted into heat, while the maximum efficiency of compressed air generation is less than 10%. In air compressor heat recovery systems, the focus is on capturing the heat energy contained in the oil, as up to 80% of the energy extracted from the power plant is found there.
A focus on sustainable products and packaging, in combination with a passion for quality, has resulted in considerable growth for the firm. Plans to add production lines at facility #1, in turn, drove the need to address the plant’s faltering compressed air system.
This article will be of particular interest to industrial system operators unfamiliar with tankless (primarily closed) systems who may be considering either installing new systems without tanks or removing existing open tanks. The topics covered step through an understanding of tankless systems while also including tank system pointers and insights on converting systems with tanks into tankless systems.
The Cooling Technology Institute’s (CTI) four educational sessions drew standing-room-only crowds. Representatives from BPEARSON Consulting, SPX Cooling Tech, Eurovent and Baltimore Aircoil Company presented Fundamentals of Water Treatment; Cooling Tower Fundamentals; System Sustainability? Prove it with Certified Performance; and Fundamentals of Adiabatic Heat Rejection. Owners and operators of heat rejection equipment can join the CTI and attend its annual conference to meet the several dozens of technical experts with hundreds of years of combined experience capable of assisting with your next project.
Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine interviewed Mr. Bill Kennedy, Global Marketing Manager, Mattei Compressors.
If the electricity costs 8x what you paid to purchase the compressor, and you can reduce that value by 20% or more, the compressor is virtually free as the energy savings provide a return-on-investment that exceeds the purchase price. Now, if you eliminate the need to ever have to overhaul the airend you gain a massive financial and long-term reliability advantage.
Utilities monitoring paired with machine learning models can reliably predict anomalies, prompting action that can prevent waste and optimize resource use.
The initial cost of a nitrogen generation system may be greater than high-pressure cylinders and liquid nitrogen containers, but most companies will reach a return on investment within 12-18 months with proper sizing of the system based on process demands. Breweries typically experience savings associated with gases of 50-75% by switching to on-premises nitrogen generation. If a regular maintenance schedule is followed, PSA nitrogen generation systems can have a life expectancy of 15-20 years.
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.
During Dealer Week, they needed enough compressed air to power multiple machines at a time all day long. Keeping simultaneous demos running for all their top machines required airflow of up to 400 cubic feet per minute (CFM). However, outside of Dealer Week, their compressed air demands were quite modest. On a typical day, they only needed 20 CFM to power their dust collection system and pneumatic tools for their dock and warehouse crating areas.
In early October 2022, professionals from around the world gathered at the Best Practices 2022 EXPO & Conference in Atlanta to source and learn about the latest on-site utilities powering modern plant automation including compressed air, blowers, vacuum, pneumatics, motors and cooling water systems. This report recaps a fraction of the event’s education curriculum and provides an editorial tour of sponsoring exhibitors’ machinery displays and product introductions.
Compressed air production in industrial facilities consumes 10% of electrical power, on average. While this can vary up or down, it is an industrial average, and is very significant in most plants.
Do you know how much of your power cost goes to producing compressed air? We’ll come back to this at the end of this article.
