Air Compressors

During my forty years of involvement with distribution (companies that sell and service compressed air system products) as a Vice President of Sales and Marketing and Account Manager, I have witnessed a tremendous amount of change in the compressed air industry. As much as we like to reminisce about the good old days, it is quite apparent that the resources, capabilities and knowledge of distribution today are significantly better than ever before.

Quite a number of worst-case compressed air scenarios have been encountered over the years but none may compare to the conditions that existed in a metal foundry somewhere in North America. For reasons you are about to discover, we will not reveal the name of this factory or its location, in order to protect the innocent from embarrassment.

Sullair of Houston, one of the largest North American distributors of Sullair industrial and portable diesel compressors, loves a challenge. The company designs customized air compressor packages that fit the rough and rugged world outside the walls of an industrial plant. It builds air compressor solutions that operate efficiently in extreme, harsh environments around the globe. This includes offshore or marine environments, high or low ambient conditions—any environment where a standard air compressor will not operate safely or efficiently.

Production complains about frequent work stoppages due to air supply related problems. It wants a more reliable consistent source of compressed air. Maintenance says it will need to replace an older compressor with a new one to improve the reliability and stability of the system. Maybe purchase a bigger one than currently needed in anticipation of future increases in air demands. Management wants assurances a good return on the investment will be realized from the expenditure before making a financial commitment. For comparing and evaluating alternatives, a benchmark must be established to determine the cost to run the current system. An assessment must be performed to identify the saving’s opportunities and assign dollar values. Questions about the cost of the assessment and what is to be expected in return need to be answered.

As an industrial distributor for 65 years, C.H. Reed, Inc. has been providing ideas, concepts and sustainable solutions to help manage issues associated with three key areas of industrial plants: compressed air systems and equipment; assembly tools and ergonomic material handling; paint finishing and fluid handling equipment. Compressed air has always been a strong focus for C.H. Reed, and it’s a common thread running through all of its product families.

This metal fabrication and machining facility produces high-quality precision-built products. Over the years, the plant has grown and there have been several expansions to the current location. The company currently spends \$227,043 annually on energy to operate the compressed air system. This figure will increase as electric rates are raised from their current average of 9.8 cents per kWh.

When the topic of discussion is making ice cream, the first thing that comes to mind isn’t heat, but at Nestlé’s Ice Cream factory in Tulare, California, heat is recovered from air-cooled air compressors to heat process water.

“Right out of the gate, everything is pneumatic,” explains Tom Finn, Project Engineer with Nestlé Ice Cream Division. “Air cylinders and air driven motors, the process piping valves which divert, route, stop/start, and mix process fluids, our packaging machinery including rejection, cleaning and vapor removal processes, all of these rely on compressed air.

Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine interviewed Dr. Jay Varadaraj, (Managing Director) of ELGi Equipments Ltd.

ELGi today is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of air compressors. Like most companies, however, it started with one ambitious person. My grandfather, Lakshminaickenpalayam Govindaswamy (this where the “L” and “G” in ELGi come from) was a bus driver for the British in 1918. He purchased one bus and proceeded to build a fleet peaking at 300 buses. He believed he was in the transportation business so he entered the airline business ultimately withdrawing however when this industry was nationalized.

Boeing Canada Winnipeg (BCW) has been recognized with the best improvement project of 2013 within the Boeing enterprise worldwide. A cross-functional project team including BCW staff, Manitoba Hydro technical support, and design engineers from Alliance Engineering Services, Inc. used innovative high-pressure storage to reduce the required size of their air compressors and save substantial utility energy and demand charges.

This is a food processing plant where processes and standards are controlled by FDA to AIB standards. Annual plant electric costs for compressed air production, as operating today, are \$116,765 per year. If the electric costs of \$3,323 associated with operating ancillary equipment such as dryers are included, the total electric costs for operating the air system are \$120,088 per year. These estimates are based upon a blended electric rate of \$0.085/kWh.