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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U.K. Printer Saves Energy with Compressed Air Automation

By Nicolas De Deken, EnergAir

The Trinity Mirror Group print works on Oldham is one of the UK’s largest newspaper printers. The nine presses in the facility produce around 1million papers every day, including the Independent, the Daily Mirror and a range of local, regional and sports titles. Printing on this scale does not come cheap in energy terms, however. The plant’s annual electricity bill is in the order of £1.5millon. With energy prices on the rise, and a strong desire to improve environmental performance and reduce its carbon footprint, the plant’s management has recently embarked on a project to cut energy use substantially.

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Centralized Compressor Controls Save Tremendous Amounts of Energy

By Chris Gordon, Blackhawk Equipment Corp.

It has been my experience that more than 50% of industrial air users don’t control their air compressor resources effectively. As a result, a tremendous amount of energy is wasted. When my firm does audits of plant energy consumption, it’s not unusual for us to encounter installations with large numbers of independently-controlled compressors that are all running at different pressure settings and different loads.

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How Efficient Are Those Pneumatic Valves?

By Richard F. Bullers, SMC Corporation of America

Back when gasoline was 35 cents a gallon, the term “environmental technology” was not well known. Engineers did not often promote the benefits of building low-energy consumption pneumatic valves among their peers. Recycling or conservation of resources was seldom discussed with any seriousness. In reality, the conversation was more likely to have turned to the muscle cars of the day and how much horsepower they would generate.

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Furniture Maker Goes with Tri-Lobe Blowers

By Michael Camber, Kaeser Compressors

A large custom leather furniture manufacturer switches from rotary screw vacuum pumps to blowers for CNC router table hold down, and saves big on electricity, maintenance expenses and floor space.

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The Importance of Condensate Drains on Air System Efficiency

By Ross Orr, Scales Industrial Technologies, for the Compressed Air Challenge®

Condensate drains are possibly the least glamorous and most ignored component of a compressed air system but nevertheless, a most important part. No matter how much you spend on that fancy new compressed air system, VFD’S pin-stripes and flashing lights notwithstanding, not spending a little effort with your drain choice could cause you no end of headaches and increased operating costs for years to come. Contaminants can enter a system at the compressor intake or be introduced into the airstream by the system itself. Lubricant, metal particles, rust, and pipe scale are all separated and filtered out, but it’s the drains that have to operate properly for the filters and separators to be successful in completing their task.

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Oil Exploration . . . In the Food & Beverage Industry

By Chris Kelsey, Geosynthetica

In the 1970s, the use of filtration in air quality management in pharmaceutical production, hospitals, and medical device manufacturing facilities became increasingly important and increasingly of interest to regulatory agencies. The air quality field was growing. From the air moving into and out of clean rooms to the protection of surgical environments to the expansion of the global medical drug industry, compressed air began to play a larger role—a role that continues undiminished (and, in fact, has increased substantially) today.

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Plastic Molder Reduces $3.2 Million Energy Spend with Pneumatic Cylinder Retrofits

By Gary Wamsely, JoGar Energy Services

A plastics molding plant had engaged us to conduct an ‘on-site’ Energy Assessment of their facility. The annual ‘spend’ for electricity, natural gas, and water was about \$3.2 million for this modern 275,000 square foot, fully air-conditioned facility. During the Review, several opportunities were identified and delineated in lighting, HVAC, process ventilation, the water systems and energy supply contracts. However, the most significant savings were in their compressed air system.

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The Energy Costs Associated with Nitrogen Specifications

By Mike Flowe, Flowe Nitrogen Systems

So you need nitrogen in your plant! In a high percentage of cases, generating your own nitrogen using commercially available equipment is a very cost effective alternative to purchasing liquid nitrogen or cylinder nitrogen from traditional supply sources like the industrial gas companies. In some cases, the return on investment (ROI) ranges from six months to 2 years, but ROI can range, depending on several factors, to several years while still being a good investment. With rising fuel and energy costs, the cost of liquid nitrogen is going up and is making it much easier to justify the purchase of a nitrogen generator in a wide range of purities and pressures.

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Plastics Processor Outsources Compressed Air as the 4th Utility

By Tim Tensing, DirectAIR®

Treating compressed air as a true utility and outsourcing the entire process is a growing trend in the industry. If a plant does not generate their own power, provide their own water or deliver their own natural gas, then why not treat compressed air requirements in the same manner? This article will use a recent project as a case study to show the benefits one factory received by making the decision to outsource compressed air like a utility.

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Pneumatic and Vacuum Energy Optimization in OEM Machines

Thomas Dwyer, Product Manager- International Projects and John Bridges, Marketing Manager AVENTICS Corporation

Machine builders aiming to improve the energy efficiency of their machines tend to focus on using energy media other than pneumatics (typically electro-mechanical or hydraulic) since pneumatics, as traditionally applied, is viewed by some as inefficient due to factors like leakage and over-pressurization (i.e.: supplying a higher pressure in an actuator to accomplish a task which is endemic in practice). But they shouldn't, with its low cost of ownership, pneumatics when properly used remains a viable and many times preferable energy source for a given application. When generating and using compressed air, it's true that there are many places in the system where energy can be lost, however targeted measures within a comprehensive energy saving concept can prevent these losses and significantly reduce energy consumption at the machine level.

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