Industrial Utility Efficiency

Bulk

Compressed Air at a West Texas Silica Mine

By Troy Dreier, Senior Editor, Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine 

Compressed air system reliability relies on engineering expertise, environmental management and proactive maintenance. This article highlights how Brandon & Clark improved performance in two demanding applications: reducing failures in a dust-heavy silica mining operation through frequent preventive maintenance, and executing a complex disassembly and reassembly of a 300 hp air compressor in a confined university facility while preserving the OEM warranty. These cases show how tailored solutions and long-term service strategies enhance system reliability.

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Correctly Solving Low Air Pressure Problems

By Paul Edwards, President, Compressed Air Consultants, Inc.

One of the most common problems in plants is low air pressure. One of the most common solutions is to purchase new air compressors. Often this advice leads to a poor return on investment with the company’s hard-earned money. Often the issues are related to demand, distribution, or both. Solving the wrong problem can be expensive from a capital and operating cost perspective. Determining root cause analysis may cost more up front, but will save tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars long term.
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Air Compressor Control at Remote Mining Complex

By Ron Marshall, Marshall Compressed Air Consulting

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.
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Low-Pressure Air Compressors Deliver Savings for Lafarge Cement Distribution

By Ron Marshall, Marshall Compressed Air Consulting

The Lafarge Cement Distribution terminal located in Winnipeg, Canada has significantly reduced the site electrical demand and energy charges by changing the way they transport their cement.  Two new low-pressure rotary screw air compressors have replaced two large high-pressure air compressors that previously powered their dense phase transport system.  The resulting power reduction has saved the company 46 percent in transport operating costs.
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Atlas Copco Rental Provides Quick Solution for Dominican Gold Mine

A trio of stationary compressors produce 630,000 m3/hr of air for the oxygen plant at Pueblo Viejo gold mine in the Dominican Republic. The oxygen is used by its autoclave processing facility to treat roughly 24,000 tons per day of refractory ore for the 60/40 joint venture between Barrick and Goldcorp Inc., operated by Barrick as Pueblo Viejo Dominicana Corporation.
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Detailed Design — An Ounce of Design is Worth a Pound of Project

By Paul Edwards, Compressed Air Consultants, Inc.

Insufficient focus at the design phase will kill a project. In one aerospace project, insufficient detail was paid to the physical size of the air compressor. The compressor didn’t fit in the allocated space—requiring the extension of the building, and costing tens of thousands of unbudgeted dollars. That had a significant, negative impact on the project return. 
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CalPortland Energy Management Earns Another ENERGY STAR Award

By Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine

Making cement is an energy-intensive process. In a cement plant, the electrical energy load can reach up to 25 MW, consuming 185 million kilowatt hours of electricity annually. In addition, the plant consumes a large amount of coal and natural gas. CalPortland is an enormous producer of cement, concrete, aggregates and asphalt. With 80 facilities spanning five states across the western U.S., one might logically assume that CalPortland consumes a lot of energy.
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Managing Dust Collectors in Cement Production

By Hank van Ormer, Air Power USA

Cement production facilities have a significant number of dust collectors. Many have continuing problems with short bag life and low-pressure problems at the further points from the central air system. They often run on timers. When they try to run on demand control, they often get extreme short cycling, which causes even more bag problems. Most have gauges at the entry, on at least half of the dust collectors, and the compressed air feed lines are always the same size as the connector opening. This article reviews where these problems come from and provides some troubleshooting ideas.
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Vale Thompson Turbo Compressor Upgrades

By Ron Marshall for Compressed Air Challenge®

Vale in Thompson, Manitoba, Canada has reconfigured a system of large turbo compressors in their mining, milling, smelting and refining operation and gained very large energy savings through a series of improvement projects. In addition, these projects qualified for some significant financial incentives from their local power utility.  Vale is a large multinational mining company with headquarters in Brazil.  Vale operations focus on the production of iron ore, coal, fertilizers, copper and nickel.  The Thompson Manitoba operations consist of mining, smelting, milling, and refining of Nickel in the 250 acre complex that employs 1,500 people.
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Pneumatic Conveying Energy Assessment Saves $321,000

By Don van Ormer, Air Power USA

The plant air system consists of eight, single-stage, lubricated, Sullair rotary screw compressors. All units are in good working order.  Units 2, 3, 4 and 7 are water-cooled and units 6, 8, 9, 10 and 11 are air-cooled. The main plant air system has two primary compressed air dryers, a Thompson Gordon model TG 2000 refrigerated dryer, and a Sullair model SAR 1350 heatless desiccant dryer.  Both units are working according to their design. The TG 2000 uses approximately 11.2 kW and is a non-cycling type unit, and the SAR 1350 uses approximately 200 cfm of purge air to regenerate the wet tower. 
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A View From India: Pneumatic Conveying of Bulk Materials

By G.D.Nigudkar, TATA Consulting Engineers

In thermal power stations, nuclear plants, and chemical and industrial plants, different types of bulk materials are used. The materials exist in different forms including lump, powder, granules, chips, and pallets. These bulk materials, in their different forms, require efficient and reliable material handling systems.
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