Industrial Utility Efficiency
Given that compressed air leak management programs are meant to save energy, reduce CO2 emissions, and generate ROI, DENSO’s Maryville, Tennessee, manufacturing facility can definitively say it has scored a trifecta when it comes to results – and reaped benefits beyond hard numbers alone.
An industrial manufacturing plant (producing commercial water meters and valves) had engaged us to conduct an ‘on-site’ Energy & Utilities Assessment of their facility. The annual ‘spend’ for electricity, natural gas, fuels and water was about \$ 2.0 million.
In many industrial plants there are one or more applications with intermittent demands of relatively high volume. One example is the use of dense phase transport systems to convey the cement. Dense phase systems can cause severe dynamic pressure fluctuations affecting quality of the end product in a plant.
The \$mart Sequencer® is an air compressor control system designed to reduce a plant’s energy costs by continuously monitoring system demand and automatically selecting the most energy efficient combination of available air compressors.
Compressed air system controls match the compressed air supply with system demand and are one of the most important determinants of overall system energy efficiency. This article discusses both individual compressor control and overall system control of plants with multiple compressors. Proper control is essential to efficient system operation and high performance.
The goals of this article are to show why sequencers often have problems, and to demonstrate how avoid problems by proper system integration and controls design.
The purpose of this article is to investigate the cause and effect that can occur when you reduce demand with no supply changes and the alternative which will produce positive, long term results which you can take to the bank.
When was the last time you visited your compressor room? A week ago? Several weeks ago? If you are like many, you went in for the last scheduled maintenance interval and have rarely been back since. Air compressors, dryers and other air system components have become more reliable and self sustaining from a maintenance standpoint with each generation, requiring less and less human intervention.
This textile plant uses compressed air in their knitting, sewing, and dye house operations and needed a system designed for the significant fluctuations in demand. Compressed air demand profiles were placed into four segments; 1st shift peak demand and minimum demand, and 2nd shift peak demand and minimum demand.
There are a variety of means factories can use to remove or “blowoff” moisture from a package. Open tubes or drilled pipe are often viewed as simple low-cost methods. However, there are considerable drawbacks to these approaches, most notably – increased operating expense. While they may be convenient and inexpensive in the short term, these approaches often cost 5-7 times more to operate than preferred alternatives.
Compressed air users looking for energy reduction often identify their air compressors as a prime area for savings potential. But …what about end uses? There are a large number of obvious measures that can be implemented, such as leakage reduction, reducing open blowing and eliminating inappropriate uses..however, there are other more technical opportunities available that involve properly specifying or redesigning existing pneumatic circuitry in compressed air operated machines and processes.
