System Assessments

Thought Leaders on System Optimization Past & Future

Edited by Troy Dreier, Senior Editor, Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine

We asked a hand-selected list of original equipment manufacturers, independent compressed air system sales and service companies, manufacturing plants and independent system auditors to share their thoughts, highlighting the changes they’ve seen over the past 20 years, then predicting what the next 20 years will bring.

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Compressed Air Savings with Nozzles or Blowers

By Consumers Energy Business Solutions

Compressed air is used as a convenient and often necessary source of air flow to perform blow-offs, cooling, or drying. And since compressed air is a costly utility, a frequent recommendation in this magazine and audits is to reduce the compressed air use by using high efficiency engineered nozzles. Using these nozzles is a good practice as they are designed in a way that uses the compressed air to accelerate the surrounding air to deliver the same mass transfer effect as a standard nozzle (or tube) with a much larger orifice.

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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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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 Commissioning Part 2: Measurement and Data Plots

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

Facility managers, how would you like the peace of mind from knowing the system you had installed or modified is thoroughly tested - to the same degree as a new production line? How would you like to be confident that the money you spent is still paying back benefits, year after year?

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Plastic Extruder Optimizes Blow-Offs for Cooling

By Hank van Ormer, Air Power USA

At a Midwest window manufacturing plant, the cooling process for the plastic frame pieces, after leaving the extruder, was critical to process productivity and quality. Too much cooling air (or not enough cooling air) would generate scrap and rejected product. The plants’ 17 extruders and 55 separate blow-offs in these lines had similar cooling stations at the cooling boxes. They consisted of about three hoses at each exit frame angled down to the extruded piece moving past it. The compressed air flow was controlled by a manual control valve set by an operator. The operator used his experience to control the flow delivered and thereby control the product quality.

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Poultry Plant Reduces Compressed Air Use by 44%

By Don van Ormer, APenergy

A major poultry processor and packager spends an estimated \$96,374 annually on energy to operate the compressed air system at its plant located in a southern U.S. state. The current average electric rate, at this plant, is 8 cents per kWh.

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Compressed Air System Commissioning Part 1: Why do it?

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

“Retro-Commissioning” (ReCX) of compressed air systems has become a trendy activity with many utility demand-side-management programs emerging in the last 5-10 years. This is intended to be the process of “tuning up” a compressed air system, getting low cost savings from mostly adjustments and repairs. The term was borrowed from the building/HVAC industry, where it means to get a system operating as it was originally “commissioned”.

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Kaeser’s Uniform Focus on System Specific Power Benefits UniFirst

By Roderick Smith, Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine

UniFirst is one of North America’s largest workwear and textile service companies. They outfit nearly two million workers in clean uniforms and protective clothing each workday. Founded in an eight-stall garage in 1936, the Company has grown to 240 customer servicing locations throughout the U.S. and Canada servicing 300,000 business customer locations. The subject of this article is an energy-saving Air Demand Analysis (ADA), conducted by Kaeser Compressors, at UniFirst’s centralized 320,000 square foot hub Distribution Center located in Owensboro, Kentucky.

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CAC Training Leads to Savings at Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems Canada

By Ron Marshall for The Compressed Air Challenge®

MHPSC Canada is a large facility specializing in machining and manufacturing large pieces for power generation (gas turbines, large hydro, wind) and deep sea oil and gas operations. Smaller machining and manufacturing are also done in the facility, as well as welding and piping fabrication. MHPSC purchased flow meters for two systems, the Large and Small Machine Shops, to measure the total compressed air production. Since the two systems have piping that is physically close together, it was felt that there was an opportunity to tie the two systems together to save energy. The readings showed that the compressed air demand was indeed low enough in the two systems to enable a 100 hp VFD compressor to feed the combined systems.

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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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