An aerospace plant has an 8 hour per day shift, but the rest of the time the plant is empty. The facility has a compressor monitoring system where the pressure, power and flow is recorded over time. Recently, the flow meter output has been showing a regular timed pattern during overnights and weekends. The maintenance person was sent to investigate.
He found that the plant personnel were following all the recommended practices of turning off the lighting, and any machines in the plant, but they were not turning off the compressed air. In this case, some large dust collector compressed air cleaning pulses were left on. These continued to consume compressed air and waste about $3,000 of electricity per year!
Like turning off the lights, it is a wise thing to turn off the compressed air to any air consuming equipment. Even better, turn the whole compressed air system off and save the power expended in feeding any leakage that flows during non-productive hours. The reduced operating hours also reduces the maintenance requirement for the air compressors, saving even more costs.
If you are not using it, turn it off!
Don Brock says
Test at nite for air leakage to determine $ cost of leakage to motivate manage to initiate a “ stop the leakage/air waste program
Also what machines ( that May have leakage). have intermediate usage.
Turn off air to these machines
An employee air leakage cost education program will help employees recognize the
benefits of being pro active
Remember these air leakage cost are continuous
Equipment to locate air leakage can be a wise investment
Don Brock
Womack Machine Supply
Retired after 53yrs
William K. says
Certainly switching off makes sense, but sometimes getting those responsible for switching it off is a challenge. And making certain that it gets switched on at a time that has the system fully pressurized by the time work starts might require adding an automated starting system.