Industrial Utility Efficiency

Compressor Controls

Hitting the Gas on Efficient Compressed Air Delivery at Hitachi Astemo

By Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine

Hitachi Astemo’s efficiency gains will turn into significant cost savings. In this article we outline the savings reported by the client since the changeover was complete. It shows a sizeable reduction in energy costs, air compressor energy costs and maintenance costs to the tune of 21.95%, 24.14% and 24.14%, respectively. Total operating costs to date have dropped from \$1,277,394 to \$941,959 with the new system a decrease of 26.25%.

Read Full Story

Plastics Plant Saves 55% in Energy with VSD Air Compressor and Sequencer

By Ron Marshall, Marshall Compressed Air Consulting

The plant produces both molded and blow molded plastic parts on a 5 day per week, three shift schedule. Production and maintenance sometimes occurs on weekends, occasionally requiring the air compressors to run on a 24 x 7 basis so the practice was to leave the compressed air system always pressurized. The system consisted of three modulating lubricated screw compressors one sized at 150 hp and the others 125 hp (3 units), each controlled with their local compressor controllers.
[ Read Full Story ]

Understanding Controls for Multiple Centrifugal Air Compressor Systems

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

Load-sharing is an important part of a multiple centrifugal-compressor master control system. It minimizes blow-off based on the available turn-down. In addition, remote start-stop saves more energy if load floats between different ranges. Finally, adding a screw compressor and implementing a hybrid control system might save the most energy and provide the best back-up. In any case, a well-instrumented system allows engineers and operators to assess, optimize and tune the system.
[ Read Full Story ]

Master Controls for Multiple Air Compressor Systems with VFD Compressors

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

When a system has the right combination of VFD and base-load air compressors, how do you coordinate their control? What tells the air compressors to run and load, to have just enough (or no) base-load air compressors and a VFD running, all the time air is needed? Appropriate master controls are needed. These controls are often called “sequencers” or “master control systems”.
[ Read Full Story ]

Pharmaceutical Deploys Flow-based System to Control Centrifugal and Screw Air Compressors

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

A large pharmaceutical company needed huge flow rates of 30 psig air to aerate multiple fermentation processes which create food-grade materials.  Flow could vary from about 12,000 scfm to 35,000 scfm.  There were a variety of batch processes, mostly running independently.  An hour-by-hour schedule for anticipated air flow is developed every afternoon for the next day.  Based on that schedule, the boiler operators run the air compressors that can handle the load range for the whole day. In reality, the peak flow can be higher than anticipated.
[ Read Full Story ]

Compressed Air Central Controller Delivers 5 KPI’s

By Don van Ormer, AP Energy

Quite often the typical variability in compressed air flow demand does not proportionately translate into power reductions at the air compressors. This can be a result of numerous problems with the compressed air supply system. It is important to understand the supply-side’s ability to respond to the demand-side of the compressed air system. If the air compressors, on the supply-side, are not able to translate flow reductions into energy savings, implementation of demand reduction projects should be re-evaluated.  
[ Read Full Story ]

Permanent Compressed Air System Metering and Monitoring

By Jan Hoetzel, Airleader Compressor Management USA

Optimal compressed air system performance, defined by efficiency, reliability and air quality, has now become the main goal when operating, installing, purchasing or designing compressed air products. Whether you are the air compressor manufacturer, distributor or end user - everyone in the compressed air industry needs to be aware and work towards these goals.
[ Read Full Story ]

Sparks Dynamics Optimizes NIST Compressed Air System

By Mac Mottley, CEO, Sparks Dynamics

The objective of this project is to help the building automation industry develop novel products that more cost-effectively identify faults (unwanted conditions) and inefficiencies in the operation of the compressed air plants of industrial facilities.  More cost-effective fault detection and diagnostics (FDD) products can come to the building automation marketplace only after that industry makes very significant advances in the state-of-the-art of its FDD software tools from what it currently offers.  Those advances require making common practice of rules-based artificial intelligence (AI) methods that the building automation industry has shown little to no familiarity with in its technology so far.  This project will utilize, under controlled conditions, the compressed air plant of the NIST campus as a facility for test and development of an embedded rules-based FDD tool based upon NIST expertise.
[ Read Full Story ]

Meat Processing Plant Drops Compressed Air Costs 60%

By Ron Marshall for the Compressed Air Challenge®

One of the statements made in the Compressed Air Challenge’s Fundamentals of Compressed Air Systems seminar is that improvements can always be made to every compressed air system, including new ones. The statement definitely applies to a Canadian pork processing facility built a few years ago. This article is based on a compressed air audit performed two years into the life of a brand new plant. The audit found numerous problems and made recommendations that helped reduce plant compressed air operating costs by 60 percent. 
[ Read Full Story ]