Industrial Utility Efficiency

Air Compressors

Best Practices 2024 EXPO & Conference Show Report

By Troy Dreier, Senior Editor, and Brooke Jones, Digital Content Editor, Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine 

From October 29-31, 2024, professionals who operate, maintain and design industrial compressed air, vacuum, blower, nitrogen generation, process cooling and HVAC systems gathered at the Cobb Galleria Centre in Atlanta, GA, for the 6th annual Best Practices 2024 EXPO & Conference. The event featured two tracks of conference presentations and panels.

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Fifteen Years of Compressed Air Best Practices Support Gentex Business and Production Goals

By John Bilsky, MWS, CCAS, Gentex Corporation

While many businesses strive to plan, install and maintain a compressed air system that fulfils the company’s specific needs, I’ve found that implementing compressed air best practices not only accomplishes specific goals, but also results in time-tested advantages that aid in the overall business and production goals of the organization.
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Built for the Long-Term: Kaeser Kompressoren Celebrates 100 Years

By Rod Smith, Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine

This story begins in Coburg, Germany in the year 1919. Coburg was first mentioned in a monastic document dated 1056, but to speed forward almost nine centuries, Coburg would join the Upper Franconia Region of Bavaria in 1920 where it remains today. Back here in 1919, the United States passed the 19th Amendment allowing women the right to vote and Pancho Villa was attacking Juarez, Mexico. So it was in 1919 that in Coburg a gentleman named Carl Kaeser Senior would open a small workshop producing parts for the early automotive industry, along with gear wheels and special machines for the glass industry.
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SHOW REPORT EXTRA: IoT, Motors and Lubricants at the 2019 BEST PRACTICES EXPO & Conference

By Kimberly Vickman, Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine

The Best Practices EXPO & Conference held from October 13-16, 2019 in Nashville, Tennessee, saw a significant increase in attendance growing by 15% to 850 attendees from 20 countries. End user (factory personnel) attendance grew by 60%! The EXPO was also truly international showcasing 115 exhibitors from 16 countries and EXPO attendance was free for qualified industry personnel. This SHOW REPORT EXTRA complements our 2019 Best Practices EXPO & Conference Show Report.
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SHOW REPORT: The 2019 Best Practices EXPO & Conference – Another Success!

By Mike Grennier, Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine

The event brought together technology experts, systems assessment professionals, and manufacturing leaders – all of whom shared best practices and ideas manufacturing plants can use to save energy, improve sustainability initiatives and increase the overall reliability and quality of on-site utilities.
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Show Report: 2019 AEE World Energy Conference and Expo

By Compressed Air Best Practices®

The 2019 AEE World Energy Conference and Expo was held September 25-27 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington D.C. The event featured 14+ tracks, 56 sessions, over 260 individual speakers, and 62 exhibitors.  Both Chiller & Cooling Best Practices and Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazines were pleased to be in the literature bins at the 2019 AEE World!
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Integration: Should Compressed Air Monitoring Be Combined with Control?

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

Maintenance is the customer of controls and energy engineering is the customer of monitoring. And I discussed potential problems that can occur when combining monitoring and control in the same system. In this article, I will get more specific about building practical systems that address both controls and monitoring.
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Control Strategies for Efficiently Operating Multiple VFD Air Compressors

By Ron Marshall, Marshall Compressed Air Consulting

By far the most important development in the world of screw type air compressors has been the introduction of variable speed control using electronic variable frequency drives (VFD’s). Systems that run with at least one air compressor at part load can almost always operate more efficiently if a well-controlled VFD is added to the system. But what if a system has two or more VFD units? This article discusses the challenges in controlling multiple VFD air compressors with some suggested solutions.
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The Hydraulic Air Compressor: An Old Idea Made New

By Ron Marshall, Marshall Compressed Air Consulting

The team is building on engineering concepts that were used to develop the first hydraulic air compressor at Dominion Cotton Mills, Magog, Quebec, Canada, over 100 years ago. The basic principles of the HAC were then used to produce compressed air at 17 locations worldwide, including the last at Ragged Chutes near Cobalt, Ontario, Canada, over 100 years ago.  This article discusses the development the HAC in this decade and the continuing work at Laurentian University, Ontario, to modernize the concept.
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A Tale of Two Cities - Comparison of Fixed-speed and VSD Compressed Air Systems

By Ron Marshall, Marshall Compressed Air Consulting

The compressed air system at the mail sorting facility has been in service since the 90’s. Two older 50-horsepower (hp) air-cooled fixed-speed lubricated air compressors are housed in the equipment room of the facility. The air compressors duty cycle alternates between one another on a set schedule. A 240-gallon wet storage receiver is used to help with air compressor control, with the air flowing through the receiver to a non-cycling refrigerated air dryer and system filters before finally being passed to the plant.
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