Technology

ASHRAE 90.1 Brings New Requirements to Compressed Air System Design

By Troy Dreier, Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine

Word is beginning to filter out about the 2022 changes to the ASHRAE 90.1 energy efficiency standard, and the changes it promises to bring to how compressed air systems are specified, commissioned and maintained. More specifically, the industry is learning about section 10.4.6 of 90.1, which is the first time the standard has included a section on compressed air.

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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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Harris Equipment Helps Food Companies Attain SQF Certification

By Neal Lorenzi

SQF is a food safety management company that conducts audits and reports its findings on companies that voluntarily subscribe to its services. Once an audit is performed, SQF releases the data; from this data, other companies can determine who they want to use for packaging and manufacturing. To facilitate the process, SQF has released a guide that provides directives for processes used in manufacturing.

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EnergAir Manages Multiple Air Compressors at Whirlpool

By Nicolas De Deken, EnergAir USA

EnergAir’s unrivalled expertise in compressed air management is helping to save in excess of \$50,000 per year at Whirlpool Corporation’s Ottawa, Ohio production facility. Whirlpool is the largest global manufacturer of home appliances and employs almost 70,000 people in more than 60 production and technology centres around the world. The Whirlpool plant in Ottawa manufactures a market-leading range of trash compactors, chest freezers, upright freezers and refrigerators.

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Kaeser Rotary Screw Blowers for Wastewater Aeration

By Rod Smith, Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine

Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine interviewed Frank Mueller (President) and Stephen Horne (Blower Product Manager) from Kaeser Compressors. Kaeser Compressors continues to grow both in the U.S. and internationally. We currently employ approximately 4800 people globally. In order to support the demand and maintain our superior quality and quality service levels, we continue to invest in people, facilities and technology.

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Remote Diagnostics for Water Filtration Systems

By Craig Correia, Process Automation Industry Manager, Festo Corporation

Productivity is more reliable when equipment can be monitored to detect incipient failures and take corrective action before the plant goes down. But many devices, such as analog control valves, pneumatic valve terminals and field sensors, often do not offer diagnostic feedback, or it is not being used. This white paper describes how this problem is being addressed, and includes an example of pneumatic valve terminals that can monitor, among other things, open load or coil currents at the specific valve and pressure inside the valve terminal.

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Visualizing Compressed Air Flow at VPInstruments

By Rod Smith, Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine.

Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine interviewed Pascal van Putten (CEO) of VPInstruments. -- We founded VP Instruments, in 1999, with the mission being to apply our experience with flow sensor technology to compressed air and gas flow applications in laboratories with a “one size fits all applications” concept. We did some trade shows and sold one unit during the first year – a tough start. So we hired a consultant who helped us re-package the technology completely. This led us to launch the VPFlowMate, in 2002, in a small and easy to use package. The company has taken off since then.

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Evaluating Air Compressor Cooling Systems

By Air Technology Group, Hitachi America.

As the population continues to grow in the United States, industrial water use will need to continue to fall to help offset the increases in public-supply water use. Water-cooled compressed air systems provide an opportunity for sustainability managers to reduce associated cooling water consumption and costs. If switching to air-cooled air compressors is not possible, understanding the costs and the alternative types of liquid cooling systems is important.

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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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6 Reasons to Log Your Compressed Air System

By Ron Marshall for the Compressed Air Challenge®

The compressed air system in most industrial and commercial facilities is vital to production machinery and processes. When it goes down so does the plant output. This important utility is often one of the most costly energy consumers in a facility. Yet most compressed air system operators have little knowledge of how their compressed air system is performing and, if problems have happened, do not have an accurate record of what went wrong.

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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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