Industries

The plant produces both molded and blow molded plastic parts on a 5 day per week, three shift schedule. Production and maintenance sometimes occurs on weekends, occasionally requiring the air compressors to run on a 24 x 7 basis so the practice was to leave the compressed air system always pressurized. The system consisted of three modulating lubricated screw compressors one sized at 150 hp and the others 125 hp (3 units), each controlled with their local compressor controllers.

The Pepsi bottling plant in Winnipeg, Manitoba has upgraded both their main 100 psi compressed air system and their 600 psi PET bottling system in two separate projects. The system improvements have saved the company both maintenance and electrical operating costs, and even reduced some winter heating demand.

Since 2002, Energy Trust of Oregon has saved and generated 728 average megawatts of electricity and 52 million annual therms of natural gas. This is enough energy to power Multnomah and Washington counties while heating Deschutes County homes. ETO has saved enough energy equal to the output of a power plant and reduced reliance on fossil fuels. In total, they have invested \$1.5 billion to save customers more than \$6.9 billion on their energy bills over time. They have also added \$5.7 billion to the local economy, including \$1.7 billion in wages, \$312 million in small business income and employment equal to 4,700 full-time jobs lasting a decade.

This “nation’s largest regional show” has a 200,000 square foot exhibit floor and also has an interesting educational conference track. The show floor brings together the premier vendors of packaging and machinery with key decision makers in the Northwest’s food and beverage industry.

Their job is to brake the cars by gripping the wheels. They are operated either pneumatically or hydraulically, with Alton & Southern Railway’s system using the former. Considering much of Alton & Southern Railway’s compressed air piping system dated back to its 1960’s installation date, there were leaks. As of 2012, it was determined one and a half compressors were running at 100% capacity just to maintain leaks. This equated to about 1,500 cfm at a cost of roughly \$180,000 in electricity annually.

A Canadian poultry plant has upgraded their aging compressed air system for their new expansion, making it significantly more energy efficient and also solving ongoing pressure problems. The project has given the facility a much better system overall and increased system capacity enough to cover additional compressed air load. This article describes what was done to improve their compressed air system.

Process Expo delivered an exciting and informative four-day event at the McCormick Place Convention Center attracting a qualified group of attendees who took advantage of the various educational tracks including food safety, hygienic design and FSMA regulations. Attendees were also able to see three full working production lines right on the show floor, and even explore state-of-the-art technology in the Virtual Reality Showroom.

A large mining complex in a remote northern region of the world invited a compressed air auditor in to assess the efficiency of a problematic system. Site personnel and their air compressor supplier were concerned a system in one of the buildings was not running optimally, and wanted to know what size of compressor to install in the facility. The auditor found significant savings in this target system, but even larger potential savings were found in other ancillary systems in the complex, as part of an extra investigation conducted while at the site. Overall, the potential energy savings total more than half of a million dollars, if all recommendations are implemented.

A zinc producer spends an estimated \$516,000 annually on electricity to operate the air compressors in a compressed air system at its north American plant.  The current average electric rate, at this plant, is 5 cents per kWh, and the compressed air system operates 8,760 hours per year. This system assessment recommended a group of projects able to reduce these energy costs by fifty-one percent (51%) to an annualized \$270,000.  The simple payback of the project was 15 months – without taking into account potential incentive dollars from the local utility.

A meat processor, located in Canada, hired a consultant to assess their compressed air system as part of a company-wide energy conservation effort. The assessment and analysis showed, despite having a modern compressed air system using a VSD air compressor and pressure/flow control, the system was running inefficiently and had significant levels of leakage and inappropriate use.