Compressed Air Best Practices - September 2008 - (Page 28) | 09/08 Focus Industry FOOD PACKAGING & PROCESSING | ACCURATE AIR ENGINEERING AND CALIFORNIA’S FOOD INDUSTRY Please describe Central California. Food processing in the upper/central valley (the “salad bowl” of the nation) is growing. We are seeing both new plants and upgrades of current systems. One of the issues reviewed in system upgrades is cleanliness including compressed air quality levels. Older rotary screw compressors are being upgraded to food grade lubricant and there is more focus on downstream filtration. Factories are moving away from in-line coalescing filters and going to low pressure-drop oil mist eliminators in the compressor room. AAE serves this market out of our Bakersfield, Fresno and Lodi branch operations. All branches are very experienced with optimizing compressed air systems for the diverse local industries like agriculture, oil production, food processing and packaging, family and corporate farms, food and beverage manufacturers, packaging material manufacturers, glass plants, printing and bottle manufacturers. Both branches have fully staffed factorytrained sales and service departments. Air compressors with automated sequencers and air storage save energy at a farm in central California. Has Northern California recovered? Northern California still hasn’t recovered completely from the “off-shoring” of Silicone Valley and the bursting of the tech bubble. We have, however, seen some new industries come into the empty buildings left behind. We are active with CDA systems and upgrade many installations into more energy-efficient systems. The Lodi branch works actively with the engineering firms in the region in the application and design of instrument air compressors, methane gas recovery compressors and blower systems for municipal wastewater. AAE’s Lodi branch serves as our northern material inventory hub as well as our “Engineered Packaging Center” which provides custom compressed air and process gas packaging for all AAE locations. This is a 17,000-squarefoot facility with complete overhaul, service and packaging capabilities. Please describe your work with bakeries. Accurate Air Engineering works with some of the largest bakeries in the nation. We have not seen bakeries adopt any kind of specification. Many bakeries still use oil-flooded air compressors with limited integral filtration. Others do use oil-free or oil-less air compressors. Every installation is different, like in general industry. They then use oil mist eliminators or in-line coalescing filters. We don’t see many standards being used yet. At bakeries we focus on eliminating open blowing applications so we can create some back-up capability and redundancy. We are currently working on this at six bakeries for one specific customer. Oil-Free air compressors at a food processing plant. 28 www.airbestpractices.com http://www.airbestpractices.com
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