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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Air Compressor Control Lessons Learned at Metal Products Company

By Ron Marshall, Marshall Compressed Air Consulting

Their system was designed and built to achieve premium performance, yet in a recent compressed air assessment the numbers showed their system had surprisingly poor performance, and worse, their staff was unaware of the problems. This article discusses some of the challenges faced and some future solutions that could get their system back to higher performance levels.

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Small Piston Air Motors Save Big Energy While Ensuring Safety

By Jerry Zolkowski, Industrial Energy Management Principal Engineer, Consumers Energy Business Energy Efficiency Programs

Vane motors can run at much higher speeds (2000 rpm and up), but piston motors tend to turn much slower – less than 1000 rpm. For slower speed applications, vane motors are mated with a gear reducer and called a gearmotor. The gearmotor can produce the higher torque and slower speed needed for some applications, but the gear reducer can add some drivetrain loss. While a piston air motor may not be able to replace a vane motor where high speed is needed, it can be a good choice for high torque/low speed applications.

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Improving Sustainability Through Compressed Air and Utilities Monitoring

By Dr. Michael Britzger, Senior Manager, IIoT Engineering & Innovation, and Nils Beckmann, Global Director Engineering Intelligent Automation & Solutions for EMERSON Machine Automation

Utilities monitoring paired with machine learning models can reliably predict anomalies, prompting action that can prevent waste and optimize resource use.

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On-Premises Nitrogen Generation Addresses Carbon Dioxide Supply Concerns for Breweries

By Garrett Rinker, Senior Project Engineer, South-Tek Systems

The initial cost of a nitrogen generation system may be greater than high-pressure cylinders and liquid nitrogen containers, but most companies will reach a return on investment within 12-18 months with proper sizing of the system based on process demands. Breweries typically experience savings associated with gases of 50-75% by switching to on-premises nitrogen generation. If a regular maintenance schedule is followed, PSA nitrogen generation systems can have a life expectancy of 15-20 years.

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Festo Smart Pneumatics and AI Solutions Spur Gains Toward Sustainability

By Mike Grennier, Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine

If there was ever a place where manufacturers can save energy using compressed air and make measurable gains toward sustainability, it’s with pneumatics that power a seemingly infinite variety of machines and processes.

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When Three Air Compressors Are Better Than One (or Two)

By Derrick Taylor, PneuTech

During Dealer Week, they needed enough compressed air to power multiple machines at a time all day long. Keeping simultaneous demos running for all their top machines required airflow of up to 400 cubic feet per minute (CFM). However, outside of Dealer Week, their compressed air demands were quite modest. On a typical day, they only needed 20 CFM to power their dust collection system and pneumatic tools for their dock and warehouse crating areas.

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Five Decades of Innovation at Festo USA

By Roderick Smith, Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine

The history of Festo began in 1925 in Germany. Festo USA was founded on March 15th, 1972 in Port Washington on Long Island, with the focus of being a full-line supplier of pneumatics – a focus we continue with today.

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Boosting Process Vacuum Performance at a High-Tech Electronics Plant

By Bryan Jensen, Engineered System Solutions Manager, Rogers Machinery Company

Electronics applications typically run their tooling requiring Process Vacuum based on differential pressure from barometric; that is, they control their PVAC pumps to “Inches of Mercury Vacuum”. This is because the parts and pieces being manipulated by vacuum are of certain sizes, shapes, and weights. If the differential pressure across the part is not great enough, then the tooling will fail and result in a loss of product, adverse impact to quality, and production downtime.

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DOE Better Plants Partners Get Serious About Compressed Air Systems

By Robert Lung, BGS, with contributions from: Ed Willhite, Schneider Electric; Stephen Tankersley, Ring Containers; Marco Gonzalez, Waupaca Foundry; and Darwin Jaeger, Plastics Engineering Company.

Compressed air is used in all the company’s plants and is often the single largest energy end use within them. As a result, compressed air energy-saving measures are often replicable across the company and offer significant positive impacts. One area of focus is with compressed air leaks since they are “the best low hanging fruit to focus on and they always keep popping up and waste energy”.

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What is CFM in Compressed Air? How Much Do I Have? How Much Do I Need?

By Hank van Ormer, Technical Director, AP Energy

Do the questions in the title seem like simple questions? There are many things that confuse the issue including air compressor condition, controls as applied, interconnecting pipe size and configuration and effective storage. All of these have been covered in many technical compressed air papers and articles. The topic many don’t use or understand is how to calculate the actual value of these initial questions at the operating sites and conditions.

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