Industrial Utility Efficiency

Leaks

Hyster-Yale Sustainability Recognized by North Carolina DEQ

By Stephen Kelly, Senior EHS Manager, Hyster-Yale Materials Handling

Hyster-Yale’s Greenville, North Carolina, plant reduced compressed air waste through employee-driven leak detection and system optimization, achieving $177,000 in annual energy savings. The initiative also avoided 858 tons of CO2 emissions and earned the facility Environmental Steward recognition from the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.

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Australian Company Focuses on Compressed Air Waste & Quality

By Ron Marshall for the Compressed Air Challenge®

A small Australian company, Basil V.R. Greatrex (BVRG), is shaking up the compressed air industry in Australia. While other companies focus on the sale of more and bigger compressed air production equipment, BVRG is helping customers reduce their compressed air system size and lower system flow by attacking waste, inappropriate use, and at the same time improving air quality.
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Compressed Air System Costs Meet the Real World

By Ron Marshall for the Compressed Air Challenge®

There is an often-quoted ratio of 7.5 hp input to one horsepower output used to illustrate the inefficiency of the energy transfer in compressed air systems.  What this is saying is that you receive the benefit of only 13 percent of the energy you put into your air compressors as mechanical output at the shaft of a typical compressed air powered tool. While this ratio is generally true for compressed air system awareness discussion purposes, you should understand that in the real world compressed air efficiency is usually much lower.
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Automaker PROTON Attacks Compressed Air Waste

By Abdul Azeem bin Mohamed Mohideen, Electrical Energy Manager, PROTON

Edited by Ron Marshall

Compressed air optimization measures adopted by PTMSB have reduced the consumption of compressed air by 31 percent resulting in savings of about 3,761,000 kWh per year in energy consumption. The monetary savings are MYR 1,090,627 per year (\$255,000 USD). The CO2 reduction is estimated at 2,735 ton per year.
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PET Power Containers and Compressors aiR Us Design Plant Expansion

By Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine

PET Power Containers, a Canadian manufacturer of PET plastic containers, had plans for expanding its operations with the addition of more blow-molding equipment. Before the expansion could happen, however, the company needed to assess its compressed air system. Based in Vaughan, Ontario, PET Power provides a dizzying array of differently shaped and sized plastic bottles. Their operations run 24/7, and compressed air plays a key role in their primary manufacturing applications, including PET blow molding, PET preforming, and labeling bottles.
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Fiberglass Parts Plant Finds Savings Beyond the Air Compressor Room

By Ron Marshall for the Compressed Air Challenge®

A Canadian fiberglass plant has completed a lengthy compressed air improvement journey and achieved significant efficiency gains by applying “the systems approach.” Along the way, the company ran across many frustrating problems, the solutions to which were only determined after the entire system was monitored holistically using data loggers. The overall compressed air audit led to a reduction in energy usage of 48 percent, yielding savings worth \$17,500 per year. The project also qualified for a large utility incentive of \$32,000 with a calculated payback of 4.4 years.
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Compressed Air Demand-Side Demons at a PET Bottle-Blowing Plant

By Pete Rhoten, Air Engineering LLC. and Greg Fitzpatrick, Compressed Air Technologies, Inc.

Sometime in mid-2015, I received a call from a project engineer at a major plastics firm. He had a troubling issue with one of his PET bottle plants. The bottom line was this: They could not run all five high production blow-molding machines at one time—even though they were able to do so 18 months previously.
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Meat Processing Plant Drops Compressed Air Costs 60%

By Ron Marshall for the Compressed Air Challenge®

One of the statements made in the Compressed Air Challenge’s Fundamentals of Compressed Air Systems seminar is that improvements can always be made to every compressed air system, including new ones. The statement definitely applies to a Canadian pork processing facility built a few years ago. This article is based on a compressed air audit performed two years into the life of a brand new plant. The audit found numerous problems and made recommendations that helped reduce plant compressed air operating costs by 60 percent. 
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Ultrasonic Leak Detectors Help Dairy Producer Optimize Compressed Air System

A modern dairy without compressed air is nowadays no longer imaginable, and it is used primarily for driving control units and machinery. Approximately 60 percent of the compressed air generated is used for packaging lines. However, compressed air is one of the most expensive energy sources in dairies. Even in carefully maintained compressed air systems, about 20 percent of the generated energy is lost through leaks. In particular, vacuum leakages in separators result in high energy losses. A small leak can cost up to several thousands of Euros a year.
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What to Expect from an Effective Compressed Air Audit

By Don van Ormer, Air Power USA

Compressed air has moved to higher visibility in the energy conservation field, and the buzzwords abound: “the fourth utility” — “your most expensive utility” — “eight times more expensive than electricity” — “a quarter-inch leak costs \$9,000 in wasted energy.” This greater awareness has also produced compressed air auditors that are springing up like summer dandelions. With audits available from many sources, it is important to understand what plant operations, engineers and maintenance managers should expect from a complete audit — or more aptly — a complete air system review.
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Flow Metering Demand-Side Projects in Large Compressed Air Systems

By Tim Dugan, P.E., President, Compression Engineering Corporation

As a reader of this journal, you are well aware that large compressed air systems often have significant wasted air — often from leaks — that represent tens of thousands of dollars of waste per year. However, it is our experience that the so-called “low-cost” measures identified often go un-repaired, while other more costly capital projects get funded. Why? With an ROI of a half year or less, they seem like IQ tests to many compressed air auditors.
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