Piping Installation Choices Can Contribute to Savings

Many plants have piping for their compressed air systems that has evolved over the years and has not necessarily been planned to supply flow and pressure to each process properly. By comparison, if your electrical system was expanded is a similar, haphazard manner, you might find you were constantly battling a lot of small electrical fires. Let’s try to avoid that.

Here are some of the areas you can check to see if your air distribution system is in good health:

• Do you have more than an 8 PSI pressure drop between the compressor and the furthest point or critical area in your plant? If so, you need to investigate your pipe sizing and configuration.
• Does your compressor cycle load and unload in less than one minute? If so, you may need additional tank storage capacity and/or a remote pressure transducer.
• Do you have an area that complains of low pressure when a process is started? If so, you may need a remote tank to serve this process and protect the rest of the system.
• Is there rust and scale in your piping causing equipment operation or hand tool issues? Is so, you may need to clean or replace with copper/coated aluminum piping to eliminate the problem in this area along with a final filter.

If you are able to change your piping and reduce pressure by 10 PSI, you will save five percent in energy over the course of the year, which could be thousands of dollars. Along with this, you will be providing better quality air to your plant and allowing your equipment to run more consistently. Here is information on air compressor piping that you may find useful in evaluating your situation.

Green Cooling Can Reduce Electric Bill Substantially

When we talk to customers about “Green” cooling, we don’t mean the machine is green or the water is green. We are referring to chilled water for their process cooling that is “efficient” in its use of electricity. Going “Green” is very important today.

Many industries require 40 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit water provided by a refrigeration chiller. Usually, the machine is not touched by a maintenance person until a problem occurs with the equipment – or worse, it starts having a negative effect on the manufacturing process. This neglect can be costly – in many different ways.

For many customers, the requirement for chilled water is a year-round event, even though part of the year the outside temperature can be 10, 20 or 30 degrees Fahrenheit lower than required water temperature. Yet, the chiller is still running – creating “chilled” water. That’s a prescription for waste.

During the winter months, by not taking advantage of the ambient free cooling available, there can be as much as a 40 percent waste of power. Part of the reason for the problem is that equipment from five to eight years old is probably a piston-style compressor with simple, but inefficient, unloading systems, which causes considerable power to be used in part-load conditions.

Some solutions to the cooling problem
There are several things that can be done to determine if a process chiller system is really running “Green.” First, if the system is more than six to eight years old, a check of the controls will determine if the equipment is really unloading during low production time. Second, if the chiller is air-cooled, a check can be made monthly to see if the condensers are clean, to get the maximum heat transfer.

Finally, the system should be shut off when not in use. Most chillers consume from 15 to 20 percent of KWH when unloaded. These simple checks can have an impact on the “Green” aspects of a chiller.

Today, the latest technology lets Hope Air Systems reduce the KWH consumption as much as 50 percent through the use of variable speed drives, thermal expansion valve unloading, and other techniques that contribute to a “Green” cooling system. Contact Frank Lederer at FLederer@HopeAir.com