Technology

Safe Compressed Air Drying Systems for Class I, Division 1 Environments

By Jess Elley, Product Marketing Manager, Suburban Manufacturing Group – Tsunami Compressed Air Solutions

Learn how engineers can safely remove moisture from compressed air systems in hazardous environments by eliminating ignition risks through pneumatic controls. This article explores design considerations, performance characteristics and reliability factors for regenerative desiccant dryers operating in Class I, Division 1 locations.

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Mattei Rotary Vane Technology Advancing Efficiency and Durability

By Roderick Smith, Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine

Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine interviewed Mr. Bill Kennedy, Global Marketing Manager, Mattei Compressors. If the electricity costs 8x what you paid to purchase the compressor, and you can reduce that value by 20% or more, the compressor is virtually free as the energy savings provide a return-on-investment that exceeds the purchase price. Now, if you eliminate the need to ever have to overhaul the airend you gain a massive financial and long-term reliability advantage.

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Improving Sustainability Through Compressed Air and Utilities Monitoring

By Dr. Michael Britzger, Senior Manager, IIoT Engineering & Innovation, and Nils Beckmann, Global Director Engineering Intelligent Automation & Solutions for EMERSON Machine Automation

Utilities monitoring paired with machine learning models can reliably predict anomalies, prompting action that can prevent waste and optimize resource use.

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On-Premises Nitrogen Generation Addresses Carbon Dioxide Supply Concerns for Breweries

By Garrett Rinker, Senior Project Engineer, South-Tek Systems

The initial cost of a nitrogen generation system may be greater than high-pressure cylinders and liquid nitrogen containers, but most companies will reach a return on investment within 12-18 months with proper sizing of the system based on process demands. Breweries typically experience savings associated with gases of 50-75% by switching to on-premises nitrogen generation. If a regular maintenance schedule is followed, PSA nitrogen generation systems can have a life expectancy of 15-20 years.

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Festo Smart Pneumatics and AI Solutions Spur Gains Toward Sustainability

By Mike Grennier, Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine

If there was ever a place where manufacturers can save energy using compressed air and make measurable gains toward sustainability, it’s with pneumatics that power a seemingly infinite variety of machines and processes.

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When Three Air Compressors Are Better Than One (or Two)

By Derrick Taylor, PneuTech

During Dealer Week, they needed enough compressed air to power multiple machines at a time all day long. Keeping simultaneous demos running for all their top machines required airflow of up to 400 cubic feet per minute (CFM). However, outside of Dealer Week, their compressed air demands were quite modest. On a typical day, they only needed 20 CFM to power their dust collection system and pneumatic tools for their dock and warehouse crating areas.

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Air Compressor and Dryer Innovation Unveiled at Best Practices 2022 EXPO & Conference

By Bill Smith, Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine

In early October 2022, professionals from around the world gathered at the Best Practices 2022 EXPO & Conference in Atlanta to source and learn about the latest on-site utilities powering modern plant automation including compressed air, blowers, vacuum, pneumatics, motors and cooling water systems. This report recaps a fraction of the event’s education curriculum and provides an editorial tour of sponsoring exhibitors’ machinery displays and product introductions.

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Using Heat Improves Compressed Air Production Efficiency by 90+%

By Hannu Heinonen and Olli Kuismanen, Tamturbo

Compressed air production in industrial facilities consumes 10% of electrical power, on average. While this can vary up or down, it is an industrial average, and is very significant in most plants. Do you know how much of your power cost goes to producing compressed air? We’ll come back to this at the end of this article.

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Five Decades of Innovation at Festo USA

By Roderick Smith, Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine

The history of Festo began in 1925 in Germany. Festo USA was founded on March 15th, 1972 in Port Washington on Long Island, with the focus of being a full-line supplier of pneumatics – a focus we continue with today.

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Atlas Copco Compressors Enables Sustainability-Based Production

By Mike Grennier, Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine

The U.S. air compressor market has a compressed air installed base of at least 15 million horsepower. Further, it evaluated various air audits across different customer types, sizes and segments and determined U.S. manufacturers stand to save around 13 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) annually in electricity associated with compressed air. That translates to a savings of $1 billion in energy costs per year, which would remove nine million metric tons of CO2 annually. That equates to more annual energy usage of more than 1 million homes in the United States.

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Boosting Process Vacuum Performance at a High-Tech Electronics Plant

By Bryan Jensen, Engineered System Solutions Manager, Rogers Machinery Company

Electronics applications typically run their tooling requiring Process Vacuum based on differential pressure from barometric; that is, they control their PVAC pumps to “Inches of Mercury Vacuum”. This is because the parts and pieces being manipulated by vacuum are of certain sizes, shapes, and weights. If the differential pressure across the part is not great enough, then the tooling will fail and result in a loss of product, adverse impact to quality, and production downtime.

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