Compressed Air Best Practices - September 2008 - (Page 31) Focus Industry FOOD PACKAGING & PROCESSING | 09/08 | Does the California food industry have any compressed air dew point standards? We haven’t seen any standards used across the board. Some corporations specify desiccant air dryers at all their facilities. Others have standardized on oil-free air compressors. It’s all over the map. Our climate here is not like in the Eastern U.S. where a -40 °F dew point is necessary. We have areas where an outdoor installation can use a refrigerated air dryer with no problem because of our higher ambient temperatures. In the San Joaquin Valley we have two of the largest carrot processors in the world. They have a mix of refrigerated and desiccant air dryers. They have huge ammonia compression and cold storage where the packaging room is at 38 °F. They modified their system to run the required dew points to different parts of the facility. This is also done in some tomato facilities. We upgrade them from “desiccant only” to use refrigerated dryers for different parts of the facility. This will reduce the energy costs associated with air drying. ALWAYS DEPENDABLE & RUGGED INDUSTRIAL AIR COMPRESSORS DEVAIR HAS BEEN BUILDING top quality heavy-duty industrial compressors in Barrie, Ontario, SINCE 1954 Each unit is built to order, inspected and tested, to deliver RELIABLE air. RELIABLE How about the bottling and beverage industry? Soft drink plants also have open blowing applications. A facility in San Diego tends to use compressed air to blow water off of the top of the cans before they are boxed. The cans are sanitized and cleaned with soapy water and compressed air is used to blow the water off the cans. This again is an open-blowing application, which we will review for efficiency opportunities. Wineries in California often have too much installed hp. Smaller wineries use compressed air as a cycling bladder press during the crush/press season in August. They will only have this higher level of air demand for three months. In the 1990s, many wineries purchased enough hp to get them through the crush season. We have gone into a lot of these facilities and recommend much smaller 15-hp air compressors for their year-round demand and then a rental air compressor for the month of August. The customer comes out ahead in this scenario. Large wineries like Gallo, Woodbridge and Mondavi have huge facilities operating nine months per year. We treat them like a normal industrial installation. PISTON AIR COMPRESSORS Heavy Duty, Precision Machined Cast Iron Pressure-lubricated, Low, 590 RPM ROTARY SCREW AIR COMPRESSORS Ruggedly built Quiet, only 63 dBA Easy to service Energy-efficient VSD models www.dvair.ca AIR COMPRESSORS YOU KNOW YOU CAN TRUST Toll free: 1 800 668 8558 (Canada) 1 800 552 7954 (U.S.A.) Email: sales@devair.ca 31 http://www.dvair.ca http://www.dvair.ca
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.