Looking to save a few extra dollars at the end of the year? It may be blowing around your plant right now and you don’t even know it. Compressed air leaks and open blowoffs are unbelievably wasteful. The old adage of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” doesn’t quite apply to compressed air. Sure, that bent up piece of 1/4”open pipe or that 18” long piece of pipe filled with 1/16” diameter drilled holes is doing the job just perfectly. But, what many folks don’t realize is that you can get a very similar effect with a lot less air. For example, the ¼” open pipe uses a whopping 140scfm at 80psi of inlet pressure! Our model 1100 Super Air Nozzle uses only 14scfm at 80psi. This is a 90% reduction in air consumption. Imagine the total air savings if this is multiplied by several open-blowoffs converted to nozzles throughout an entire plant! An 18” long drilled pipe with (36) 1/16” diameter holes uses about 144scfm at 80psi. An 18” Super Air Knife uses only 54scfm at 80psi. This is roughly 1/3 the air consumption of the drilled pipe.
Do you know your current cost of compressed air? If not, an industry standard estimate is $0.25 for every 1000 cubic feet of air. Depending on the duty cycle for each compressed air blowoff, the cost savings achieved by switching open blowoffs and drilled pipes to our energy saving air nozzles and air knives really starts to add up, the more of them you replace. Just how much does it add up to? Here’s an example.
Let’s say you have (5) ¼” open pipe blowoffs, each of which consume 140scfm at 80psi. Each of them runs for 30 seconds out of every minute, throughout an entire 8-hour shift, each day. Based on a cost assumption of $0.25 for every 1000 cubic feet of air used, this amounts to a total cost of:
5 pipes x 140scfm usage x 30sec/60sec duty cycle x 8hrs/shift x 60min/hr x $0.25/1000cuft = $42.00/shift
If this schedule is maintained for 5 days/week, 50 weeks/year, this is a total cost of $10,500.00/year
Replacing each of these 5 open pipes with a model 1100 Super Air Nozzle, total yearly cost would be:
5 nozzles x 14scfm usage x 30sec/60sec duty cycle x 8hrs/shift x 60min/hr x $0.25/1000cuft x 5 days/week x 50weeks/year = $1,050.00/year
This is a total yearly savings of $9,450.00 or a 90% cost reduction! So, you can see how quickly the cost savings can add up as open blowoffs are replaced with our Super Air Nozzles.
Don’t have any open blowoffs? Already using our efficient air nozzles and air knives? You may still have some hidden areas of potential savings. Our Ultrasonic Leak Detector is a great way to find leaks that you can’t hear with the unaided ear. Every air line junction is a potential for leaks. Anywhere that two air lines connect that is not properly sealed will allow some leakage. Multiply this by a few hundred junctions throughout a plant, and you have quite a lot of money being blown away. Something as simple as a couple rolls of Teflon tape would probably fix the problems. But, if you don’t look for them, you will never know they are there. Plugging up these leaks or replacing open blowoffs with our energy saving air nozzles and knives is like finding a $20.00 bill in your winter coat pocket when you put it on for the first time this year…didn’t know what you were missing till you actually found it. As you can see in the example above, wasted compressed air costs can add up quickly. So, sealing up only a few compressed air leaks, you will pay for your leak detector in no time at all. Once it’s paid for, the rest is just bonus.
Please visit our website too, for even more info, EXAIR.com !
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