Compressed Air Best Practices - January 2008 - (Page 33)

Focus Industry ENERGY MANAGEMENT | 01/08 | SensiNet — Wireless Sensor Networks for Industrial Monitoring Problem to Solve Improve the efficiency of the paper mill’s compressed air system, lower the electricity expense component of manufacturing cost in this commodity industry and conserve energy leading to lowered greenhouse gas emissions. As the H&V legacy system initially operated with virtually no monitoring, it was impossible to tell where air was being lost to leaks, inefficient application and distribution system degradation. Compressed air systems degrade over time and become leaky and inefficient. To compensate, the system operator increases the line pressure delivered by the air compressor. This results in the air compressor running more often in order to compensate for the degradation of the distribution lines. Inspections were performed infrequently — usually once a year — and as a result, systems operated inefficiently and used excessive electricity for long periods of time. Hollingsworth and Vose wanted to increase the frequency of system inspections but wanted to avoid the high cost of employing manual labor to do this. Proposals for traditional wired networking were too expensive and also fell outside the eligibility range for reimbursement from National Grid. SensiNet is a turnkey wireless network solution for industrial and commercial facilities where highly reliable wireless monitoring of operational or environmental data is required. SensiNet comprises three principal components: 1) SensiNet® Smart Sensors Long-lived, battery-operated radios with pre-integrated sensor probes to measure data types including electricity (either voltage, power in Kilowatt hours or current), pressure, temperature, humidity, flow and other essential operational data. 2) SensiNet® Mesh Routers Wireless mesh network repeaters that extend the range and coverage area of SensiNet. These routers collect data via wireless connection from Smart Sensors in the plant and relay it to the SensiNet Services Gateway. 3) The SensiNet® Services Gateway The Gateway provides data access and communications capabilities to bridge the data collected by SensiNet to software applications and third-party hosted services. The gateway stores and forwards data and also provides data access and graphing tools to help operators interpret and act upon information. SensiNet’s components are mutually “self-aware” to create a self-managing system that can scale from small trial deployments to massive networks spanning multiple buildings over a coverage area of multiple miles. Figure 1: SensiNet Wireless Sensor Network The SensiNet® Solution A SensiNet system was deployed to monitor the compressed air system in the plant. SensiNet is a turnkey wireless sensor network platform that enables operators of industrial and commercial facility to monitor operational levels and environmental conditions for newfound efficiencies and cost savings. The SensiNet system was configured to monitor key operating parameters of the compressed air system including temperature, line pressure, airflow and energy usage of the compressor. SensiNet software was employed to display the data and the graphical user interface and data display made it easy to spot trends leading to system degradation. The monitoring and reporting interval was set at one minute. A complete system profile was then measured every minute, and small changes in system performance became visible immediately. This enabled the facility’s personnel to take corrective action immediately to restore the system to full efficiency and avoid increased costs due to unnecessary air compressor activity. SensiNet’s wireless architecture made the system very easy to install and operate in this crowded paper mill manufacturing line. ® www.airbestpractices.com 33 http://www.airbestpractices.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Compressed Air Best Practices - January 2008

Compressed Air Best Practices - January 2008 Contents Focus Industry Features Compressed Air Industry Articles From the Editor Real World Best Practices: Selecting A VSD Rotary Compressor Audit of the Month: Energy Savings in Peru The Low-Hanging Fruit in Pneumatic Systems Mikropor America, Inc. Wireless Sensor Networks: Improve Efficiency in Compressed Air Systems Special Report: The Chicago Pneumatic Compressor Launch in North America The Importance of Measuring Vacuum The Comp-Air Service Co. Special Report: The 2007 NAACD Wall Street Watch Advertiser Index Job Market

Compressed Air Best Practices - January 2008

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