The compressed air system is the “heart” of most industrial plants.  And just like your heart, monitoring this system is very important.  It is expensive to make compressed air, and if you do not have any controls, you could waste money and give a poor performance to your pneumatic system.  EXAIR has a range of Digital Flowmeters that can help provide information about your system.   

First, let’s look at how the Digital Flowmeter can help to solve problems, monitor anomalies, and determine preventative measures. 

Solving problems: One of the biggest reasons for compressed air problems is waste.  With open pipe blow-offs, air leaks, and broken nozzles, the air compressor cannot keep up.  With the Digital Flowmeters, they can monitor that waste.  For leaks, you can turn the compressed air system off and isolate sections.  If you see a flow measurement during this time, then there are air leaks.  Air leaks are known to waste up to one-third of your compressed air capacity.  Another technique for finding waste is to replace open pipe blow offs, broken or substandard nozzles with EXAIR engineered products.  Digital Flowmeters provide a visual flow measurement of the reduction in compressed air usage, and it is an easy way to calculate cost savings and pay back.

Monitor Anomalies: With facilities that operate three shifts, it is important to monitor the compressed air system for 24 hours.  The Digital Flowmeters have options like a USB Datalogger or serial communication to monitor.  I recently worked with a company that had system shutdowns on their machines due to a low-pressure switch.  This event would happen about once a week on the third shift.   They determined the reason for the shutdown was by installing a Digital Flowmeter with a USB Datalogger.  They were able to determine the day and time when the problem occurred.  What they found was the third shift custodian would empty the water from the reservoir tank in their compressed air system.  They would not have been able to pinpoint their problem otherwise. 

Preventive Measures: A blow molding facility used the Digital Flowmeters to monitor the amount of air required to run each size of plastic bottle.  If the amount of air flow was too high or too low, he knew that there was either a set-up issue or the machine needed to be reconditioned.  With pneumatic equipment like valves and cylinders, the seals wear overtime.  Using Digital Flowmeters, he could create a Preventive Maintenance schedule to repair the machine instead of waiting for a failure to occur and stop its operation. 

EXAIR stocks Digital Flowmeters from ½” to 4” for Schedule 40 black pipe.  We can get them up to 8” Schedule 40 black pipe.  We also have them for ¾” to 4” in copper pipe and from 25mm to 101mm in aluminum tubing.  If you have a special size or type, EXAIR can calibrate them for these sizes.  We can supply an option to measure pressure and flow with our Pressure Sensing Digital Flowmeters, and we can offer a Hot-Tap Digital Flowmeter to mount onto a pressurized pipe.  For an additional item, we do have a Summing Remote Display to visualize the flow in more convenient areas.  For monitoring, the Digital Flowmeter has a USB Datalogger which stores the information for graphing.  It also has a 4 – 20 mA output for data acquisition, and an optional serial output. 

Getting more information can help paint a broader picture of the health of your compressed air system.  The Digital Flowmeter can give you some key information.  Instead of a mystery black box in the backroom, the Digital Flowmeter can measure, monitor, and store the flow information which can be vital.  If you wish to discuss more, an Application Engineer at EXAIR will be happy to assist you.  Optimizing your compressed air system will help eliminate it from having a “coronary”.   

John Ball
Application Engineer
Email: johnball@exair.com

Twitter: @EXAIR_jb

Picture: Electrocardiogram by Clker-Free-Vector-Images.  Pixabay content license.