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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Compressed Air Supply at a Metal Machining Plant

By Don van Ormer, Air Power USA

This metal fabrication and machining facility produces high-quality precision-built products. Over the years, the plant has grown and there have been several expansions to the current location. The company currently spends \$227,043 annually on energy to operate the compressed air system. This figure will increase as electric rates are raised from their current average of 9.8 cents per kWh.
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Nestlé Beats the Heat: Innovative Air-to-Water Heat Exchanger Recovers Heat from Air-Cooled Compressors

By Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine

When the topic of discussion is making ice cream, the first thing that comes to mind isn’t heat, but at Nestlé’s Ice Cream factory in Tulare, California, heat is recovered from air-cooled air compressors to heat process water. “Right out of the gate, everything is pneumatic,” explains Tom Finn, Project Engineer with Nestlé Ice Cream Division. “Air cylinders and air driven motors, the process piping valves which divert, route, stop/start, and mix process fluids, our packaging machinery including rejection, cleaning and vapor removal processes, all of these rely on compressed air.
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ELGi Goes Global

By Rod Smith, Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine

Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine interviewed Dr. Jay Varadaraj, (Managing Director) of ELGi Equipments Ltd. ELGi today is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of air compressors. Like most companies, however, it started with one ambitious person. My grandfather, Lakshminaickenpalayam Govindaswamy (this where the “L” and “G” in ELGi come from) was a bus driver for the British in 1918. He purchased one bus and proceeded to build a fleet peaking at 300 buses. He believed he was in the transportation business so he entered the airline business ultimately withdrawing however when this industry was nationalized.  
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Boeing Canada Winnipeg Recognized for Compressed Air Project

By Ron Marshall for Compressed Air Challenge®

Boeing Canada Winnipeg (BCW) has been recognized with the best improvement project of 2013 within the Boeing enterprise worldwide. A cross-functional project team including BCW staff, Manitoba Hydro technical support, and design engineers from Alliance Engineering Services, Inc. used innovative high-pressure storage to reduce the required size of their air compressors and save substantial utility energy and demand charges.
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Compressed Air System Simulation Software

By Jan Hoetzel, SIGA Development

Most of us understand each individual has a unique DNA combination. Compressed air is very similar, each compressed air system should be uniquely designed so the system performs in harmony. Properly managing the compressed air system requires an investigative audit to understand the nuances of the system and identify the most effective solution(s) for efficiency. Not investigating the system, before selecting improvements, would be like consenting to surgery without having an exam. Yet, this frequently occurs in businesses operating compressed air systems.
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Central Monitoring and Control for Multiple Air Compressors

By Don van Ormer, Air Power USA

This is a food processing plant where processes and standards are controlled by FDA to AIB standards. Annual plant electric costs for compressed air production, as operating today, are \$116,765 per year. If the electric costs of \$3,323 associated with operating ancillary equipment such as dryers are included, the total electric costs for operating the air system are \$120,088 per year. These estimates are based upon a blended electric rate of \$0.085/kWh.
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Distributor Profile: Northwest Pump & Equipment

Compressed Air Best Practices® interviewed Gregg Miller (President), Stuart Trebelhorn (Vice President Industrial), Brett Cline (Director of Marketing) and Dave Mayfield (Seattle Industrial Sales Manager Compressors) from Northwest Pump & Equipment.

Northwest Pump & Equipment was founded in 1959 - opening three branches on the same day in Portland, Seattle and Spokane. The business focus was to distribute petroleum equipment for the oil and gas market – primarily to service stations and oil jobbers. In-ground fuel tanks, hoists, lubrication equipment, lighting, farm pumps, air compressors and other gas pumping equipment were our primary product lines back when there were “Full-Service Gas Stations”. Over the years, this successful business model was expanded so the Company did business in California, Hawaii, Washington, Alaska, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, and Montana.
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Cornstarch Processor Saves $123,000 in Energy Costs

By Hank van Ormer, Air Power USA

This is a corn mill processing cornstarch, sugar, and other byproducts. Ambient air is contaminated with extremely high levels of dust due to the manufacturing processes and material handling. Average electric rates at the plant are \$0.04 / kWh. The actual plant electric cost for compressed air production is \$553,630 per year.
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Optimizing Centrifugal Compressors at a Glass Bottling Plant

By Don van Ormer, Air Power USA

This glass bottle production plant had a complete compressed air audit in 2001 and 2002 at which time many successful projects reduced and stabilized the demand at 3,148 scfm at 95 psig for the high pressure system air and 9,300-9,500 scfm at 58 psig for the low pressure system. Successful application of an oversized 7,200-scfm rated cycling refrigerated dryer completely dried up the high-pressure air, allowing the removal of several non-performing desiccant dryers and savings in direct kW and purge air.
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Your Air Compressor May Be Smarter Than You Think

By Ron Marshall for the Compressed Air Challenge®

Not long ago most air compressors were controlled with mechanical pressures switches, relays and gauges. The setup of these units, especially when attempting to coordinate multiple compressors could be a frustrating and fruitless experience because often, no sooner than the controls were correctly adjusted, some sort of mechanical gremlin would throw something out of adjustment again.
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