Compressed Air Best Practices - September 2008 - (Page 48) | 09/08 Compressed Air Industry FOOD PACKAGING & PROCESSING | EXPERT SERVICE FOR TOBACCO ROAD Is industry open to examining the energy costs of compressed air? Absolutely. That Plant Manager I mentioned was the exception to the rule — it’s always a fun story to tell though! We field a lot of inquiries from Plant Managers, Plant Engineers and Utility/Energy Managers wanting to know how they can reduce their electrical energy costs. With our auditing expertise, this demand for knowledge coming from industry is helping to grow our business. These Engineers are now purchasing compressed air systems to reduce their energy costs. In the past, they only purchased air compressors when they needed more air pressure. The great thing about these projects is that they pay for themselves in typically one to two years. They also afford the corporation the ability to talk about environmental responsibility and its efforts to reduce their carbon footprint and GHG emissions. CO2 O kW Please describe your auditing program. We are able to raise the efficiency from 3½ cfm to 5½ cfm per hp. We offer three levels of audits but focus on the first and last level. The entry-level audit is a no-charge walk-through. We will take a look at the supply-side of the system and note what types of air compressors and dryers they have. We’ll look at the position of the inlet valve on the air compressor. We’ll look at the types of controls the air compressors have and from this we can generally give the customer an idea of whether it is worth a more detailed investigation/audit. The second level (the one we don’t do often) is a two to three day audit where data logging is done on the system and a recommendation is generated. We don’t feel that two to three days is a long enough period of time to be representative of a compressed air system — and for this reason we discourage the use of this audit. The third level (and our most popular audit) is the in-depth audit, which is done over seven days. We will measure kW and numerous other variables. Pressure readings are taken at the compressor discharge and before and after the air treatment equipment. Our equipment (like the LogAir System from Sullair) is designed for the compressed air industry and is not an off-the-shelf model that will do air also. We have the memory available that we can log for up to two weeks and we take a reading every three seconds. Other systems only take a reading every two to three minutes. A lot can happen with an air system in this time period. No one else in the industry can record as many data points as we can. A typical audit will record over 350,000 data points. From this data we can build the profile of what a system is truly doing. We will also go into the plant and look for lowpressure areas and inappropriate uses. What inappropriate uses of compressed air do you run into? There are a number of inappropriate uses, which keep popping up. A big one in the summer continues to be “personal cooling.” We continue to find air hoses with the trigger taped open and positioned in a manner so it can act as a fan. Management never believes us when we find this! Blow-off air continues to be a great opportunity for improvement as well. Compressed air leaks continue to be prevalent and we offer ultrasonic leak detection services to conduct leak audits. Our leak detection system allows us to not only locate and tag a leak, but to assign a cfm value and annual cost as well. 48 www.airbestpractices.com http://www.airbestpractices.com
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