New installations, with today’s advanced electronic system controls, can achieve these benefits of pressure control without the use of flow controls. In some applications, stabilizing the air pressure has major production benefits that outweigh even large energy savings.
Production machines will not alarm or stop due to fluctuations in system pressure. Nut runners, for example, will produce the same torque operation after operation with a stable pressure. With more stable system pressure, pneumatic devices operate more consistently, efficiently, and predictably. Adding the 6-1/2% savings from reducing the power, the 13% from the leaks, and an additional 3 – 4% for increased tool efficiency brings the total savings closer to 24%.Īnother positive effect of using a flow controller to stabilize system pressure is an increase in productivity. This demand-side pressure reduction also reduced air loss due to leaks and unregulated usage by more than 13%-without fixing a leak. Instead, a flow controller was installed and they were able to achieve a dramatic reduction in system pressure: from 82 psig to 69 psig, resulting in 6-1/2% power cost savings. Their assumption was that a new air compressor was needed. In this case, the plant was having problems with pressure swings and their supply was not quite able to meet demand. The chart below shows a compressed air system before and after installing a flow controller.
In addition to reducing artificial demand, a flow controller can be used to support large intermittent demand events (like bag house purges) that might otherwise draw down the system pressure and even cause an additional compressor to start in order to rebuild the pressure. This is a conservative number since it is common that more than half of the system demand is unregulated. In a system using 2500 cfm, the drop in artificial demand (250 cfm) is equal to a 50 hp compressor. For example, if the downstream pressure can be dropped from 100 psig to 80 psig, and half of the demand is unregulated, the volume required to support the system will drop by about 10%. Given that the average compressed air system will leak about one third of the total air volume and unregulated uses can account for another one third, or more of total volume, this reduction in pressure can affect more than half of the total air supply.
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This is especially advantageous for installations with older piping where it may not be feasible to repair or upgrade the air distribution system. Further, the volume of air the compressors must produce is also reduced, so that leaks and other unregulated uses will consume less air. In many of these cases, system capacity is no longer well-matched to production demands.īy lowering the system pressure to its minimum, artificial demand is reduced. With the precision flow controls, the target pressure setting can be reduced to the minimum required for the end uses.įlow controllers present several significant energy savings and operating benefits, especially in older existing plants that don’t have the capital budgets available for major compressed air system re-designs. Too often, system pressure is set higher than needed to allow for fluctuation. Given adequate storage upstream, they can maintain system pressures within +/- 1 psig of target pressure even with large swings in demand. A flow controller is essentially a pressure regulator that reacts very quickly to changes in downstream demand, releasing volumes of stored compressed air with precision to maintain very stable system pressure.
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