Industrial Utility Efficiency

Industries

Formaldehyde Monitoring in the Poultry Industry

By Nancy Aulisa, ENMET

Formaldehyde is an organic compound that can adopt several different forms. It can be used in solution form as formalin, as a free gas, or in a solid form as paraformaldehyde prills. Formaldehyde is highly toxic to humans, regardless of the method of intake. At room temperature it is a colorless gas characterized by a pungent odor. Even with very short-term exposure, formaldehyde will cause irritation to the eyes including pain, redness, blurred vision followed by sneezing, soreness, coughing, shortness of breath, headaches and nausea. Exposure to elevated levels can lead to accumulation of fluid in the lungs (pulmonary edema).
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Foundry Air Compressors Out of Control

By Ron Marshall for Compressed Air Challenge®

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.
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Compressed Air Supply at a Metal Machining Plant

By Don van Ormer, Air Power USA

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.
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High Speed Bearing Technologies for Wastewater Treatment Applications

By Aleksandra Irving PE and Joseph Ibets PE, The Spencer Turbine Company

High speed bearing technology is applicable for aeration blowers operating at much higher speeds than the typical 60Hz, 3600RPM for cast multistage units. High Speed Turbo (HST) units are usually single stage (though some utilize multiple cores) and rotate from 15,000 to 50,000RPM. At such high speeds, standard roller bearings cannot offer the industry standard L10 bearing life. Two types of bearing technologies have come to dominate the wastewater treatment market for these types of machines: airfoil and magnetically levitated. Often the two technologies are compared as equals, however, in many significant ways they are not.
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Harris Equipment Helps Food Companies Attain SQF Certification

By Neal Lorenzi

SQF is a food safety management company that conducts audits and reports its findings on companies that voluntarily subscribe to its services. Once an audit is performed, SQF releases the data; from this data, other companies can determine who they want to use for packaging and manufacturing. To facilitate the process, SQF has released a guide that provides directives for processes used in manufacturing.
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Nestlé Beats the Heat: Innovative Air-to-Water Heat Exchanger Recovers Heat from Air-Cooled Compressors

By Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine

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.
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Kaeser Rotary Screw Blowers for Wastewater Aeration

By Rod Smith, Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine

Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine interviewed Frank Mueller (President) and Stephen Horne (Blower Product Manager) from Kaeser Compressors. Kaeser Compressors continues to grow both in the U.S. and internationally. We currently employ approximately 4800 people globally. In order to support the demand and maintain our superior quality and quality service levels, we continue to invest in people, facilities and technology.
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Remote Diagnostics for Water Filtration Systems

By Craig Correia, Process Automation Industry Manager, Festo Corporation

Productivity is more reliable when equipment can be monitored to detect incipient failures and take corrective action before the plant goes down. But many devices, such as analog control valves, pneumatic valve terminals and field sensors, often do not offer diagnostic feedback, or it is not being used. This white paper describes how this problem is being addressed, and includes an example of pneumatic valve terminals that can monitor, among other things, open load or coil currents at the specific valve and pressure inside the valve terminal.
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Boeing Canada Winnipeg Recognized for Compressed Air Project

By Ron Marshall for Compressed Air Challenge®

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.
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Auto

Hyster-Yale Sustainability Recognized by North Carolina DEQ
Hyster-Yale’s Greenville, North Carolina, plant reduced compressed air waste through employee-driven
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Bulk

Compressed Air at a West Texas Silica Mine
Compressed air system reliability relies on engineering expertise, environmental management and
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Food

Leland Brewing Adopts Modular Nitrogen Generation
A modular nitrogen generation system integrated with compressed air infrastructure enabled on-site
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Medical

An Overview of Medical Air Packages
The air is delivered through a distribution piping system that ends with a medical air outlet within
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Metals

IPS Advises Midwest Industry on Compressed Air Efficiency
IPS supplies compressed air to a lot of machinery running outdoors, such as dust collectors and feed
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Paper

Best Practices for Acoustic Inspections in the Pulp and Paper Industry
Detecting Compressed Air Leaks Can Lead to Reduced Energy Waste, Boosted Productivity, and Improved
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Pharmaceutical

GMP Compliant Monitoring of Pharmaceutical Plant Compressed Air Systems
This article is intended to show the relationships between risks and specifications, opportunities
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Plastics

Rotary Screw Booster Advances for Blow Molding
Compressed air boosters are engineered to amplify medium-pressure air (90–150 psig) to high-pressure
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Power

Air Compressor Control Gap Issues Solved at an Ethanol Plant
A newly constructed ethanol plant experienced control gap issues shortly after comissioning. 
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Printing

Blue Mountain Reins in a Sprawling Compressed Air System
The plant was intermittently operating a staggering 11 air compressors scattered across its facility
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Transit

Renew Energy Partners Fixes Variable Demand on a Large Campus
An aerospace manufacturer worked with Renew Energy Partners to address energy waste caused by
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Wastewater

Air Compressor Design Considerations for a Successful Compressed Gas Mixing Project
Compressed Gas Mixing provides uniform mixing of water or wastewater tank contents by firing
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