Winning entries in the 2021 LEAP (Leadership in Engineering Achievement Program) Awards were announced by WTWH Media today in 12 categories, including Pneumatics. This year’s winners were chosen by an independent judging panel of 12 engineering and academic professionals. For each category, judges could award Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Honorable Mentions. The 2021 Pneumatics category winners […]
Compressed air fail: The last 30 feet
An automotive plant was having trouble with a finishing tool. The device was sluggish and would easily stall. It had no power. It even sounded weak. It didn’t have that nice “Vrrip, vrrip!” sound like a normal air tool. A compressed air auditor was called in the investigate. The auditor took one look and frowned. […]
A primer on compressed air leakage calculations
Question from a reader: I was wanting to estimate my compressed air leakage level in my plant. I watched my 100-hp compressor and saw that it was loaded for 87 seconds — and unloaded for 64 seconds on the weekend with no production. How would I calculate leakage flow? Answer from Ron Marshall: You are […]
Matching compressed air capacity with controllers
An automotive parts manufacturer wants to better control the air compressors. They installed a system of permanent monitoring and discovered the following (a quote from the Maintenance Engineer) “You should see what the datalogging revealed … 73% of the time, the system was operating over 30kW/100cfm. For only 5% of the time below 25 kW. […]
A look at air compressor capacity control problems
If an air compressor ran uncontrolled at full load all the time during periods of light load, the system pressure would rise until something popped. Manufacturers have built-in ways to prevent overpressure, the simplest of which is start/stop and load/unload control, using pressure switches. But for large fixed-speed screw type air compressors, there are two […]
Compressed air fail: Dryer reading
This question came from the manager of a large manufacturing plant: Question: We have a bank of parallel refrigerated air dryers. All the air dryers are showing very good dew point, yet almost every day we have water forming in our compressed air pipes. This water causes product spoilage and is a major problem. What’s […]
Compressed air fail: Wet flow
A large mine had a compressed air assessment done to gauge the efficiency of its system. The complex had more 14 large air compressors feeding underground operations. The assessment results showed their many compressors were running at superior efficiency; in fact, the numbers were so good they could not possibly be true. In previous years, […]
Compressed air fail: Measurement discovers costly malfunction
A small sand blasting company was incurring very large electrical bills totaling $48,000 per month, even though they ran their compressors on average only 8 hours per day. A look at their compressor hour meters showed the compressor was only running at 50% load. The company had been sold on a large 250-hp compressor, due […]
Compressed air fail: Startling discovery
Here is a question from a past (and possibly future) client of a compressed air auditor. Q: I managed to get a co-op student to help with compressed air leaks management/audit for the summer and we were also lucky to have had an opportunity to do the test you recommended a couple of years ago […]
Compressed air fail: Draining profits
A large industrial manufacturer has three large compressors running constantly in the plant. Occasionally during hot summer days, moisture problems occur downstream, so personnel outfitted each compressed air component with timer style condensate drains. All three compressor have drains on the water separators — this is where most of the water squeezed out of the […]
