Tag: air leak

Save Money With Engineered Products, Then Save More Money With Rebates

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

One morning last summer, I turned on the water in the shower and waited for it to warm up. And waited…and waited. It was clear something was wrong, so I checked the water heater to find it emptying its contents into the floor drain, through the bottom of the tank, which I found later had rusted away. Between my better-than-average plumbing skills, having a son home from college, and finding out I could keep about $800 in my pocket if I bought a new one and replaced it myself, I woke the boy up (which turned out to be one of the more difficult tasks in the process), drove to my friendly neighborhood home improvement center, and bought myself a new water heater, and we had hot water by the time my wife got home from work that afternoon. Considering the way it started, it turned out to be a pretty good day. Not only was it more efficient (and therefore cheaper to run) than the one I replaced, the water heater I bought also qualified for a rebate, which increased my savings on the project to almost $900. That was some FANTASTIC icing on an already pretty decent cake.

Rewards like this for being energy conscious have been routinely offered by utility companies for years now. One time, I got a box of LED light bulbs, enough weather stripping for TWO houses the size of mine, and water-conserving shower heads, for free, from my electric company as part of a home energy audit. That was a pretty good day too.

Many utility companies across the country have similar programs for residential customers, and commercial ones too. Duke Energy (my free light bulb folks), for example, has a program they call Smart$aver that offers rebates and other incentives to companies for making energy-efficient improvements. Equipment that qualifies for these incentives includes process pumping systems, insulation for injection molding machinery & pellet dryer ducts, low friction v-belts for rotating machinery, and compressed air equipment.

That last one is what I wanted to write about today. It includes improvements to the supply side:

  • Receiver tanks
  • Cycling air dryers
  • Zero-loss condensate drains
  • Compressed air system audits

And the demand side:

EXAIR can help you out with the ones on the demand side. Consider:

Ultrasonic Leak Detector: this handheld device allows you to quickly & easily find leaks in your compressed air system.

EXAIR Model 9207 Ultrasonic Leak Detector filters out audible sound waves and focuses on the ultrasonic sound generated when compressed air finds its way out of a loose fitting, crack, etc. The parabolic disc (left) lets you find the area of the leak(s) and the tube extension (right) directs you to the precise location.
The copper tube used to have a crimped end that was aimed at the part in the chuck. They simply cut it off and used a compression fitting to install the Super Air Nozzle.

Super Air Nozzles: not only will these products get you a rebate, they’ll cost less to operate and will ensure OSHA compliance with regard to your use of compressed air. And they’ll do it quieter, to boot.

Replacing open-ended blow offs with Super Air Nozzles is oftentimes quick and easy. Compression fittings can be used to install them directly onto the ends of existing copper tubing. Stay Set Hoses can replace modular hose, which is great for machine tool coolant delivery but often misapplied for air blowing.

And frankly, I think the engineered products just look better too.

The Duke Energy Smart$aver program is for their customers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky. If that’s not you, though, North Carolina State University’s NC Clean Energy Technology Center has a comprehensive Database of State Incentives for Renewables & Efficiency – DSIRE – that’ll help you find what’s available in your area.

Compressed air isn’t free. Heck, it isn’t even cheap. If you want to find out how much you can save by optimizing your compressed air system in Six Steps, give me a call. And if you want to sweeten the deal with rebates and incentives, contact your local utility company.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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The Importance Of Preventative Maintenance

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

The first new car I ever bought was a 1995 Ford Escort Wagon. It got GREAT gas mileage (which was important for my 25 mile one-way commute to the day job), and had ample room to haul my keyboards & amplifier rig (which was just as important to my side hustle as a potential rock star). Since it only had four miles on the odometer – and, it was the first purchase I ever financed over a period of YEARS, I decided to follow the owner’s manual’s maintenance schedule religiously. And it paid off: I got eleven years and just shy of 200,000 miles out of one of the least expensive cars ever made. It was actually still running like a top when I sold it to “upgrade” to a minivan, which suited my needs at the time for a vehicle that fitted the car seats for our little boys (who are now a U.S. Marine and a hippie college student, respectively). I actually followed the maintenance schedule for that minivan too, and got 14 years & almost 180,000 miles out of it, without a major breakdown.

Whether you call it “preventive”, “preventative”, “scheduled”, or “planned” maintenance, there’s an old adage that applies in any case:

“If you don’t plan maintenance, it’ll plan itself without regard to your schedule.”

While following the proverbial “owner’s manual’s maintenance schedule” doesn’t guarantee against catastrophic failures, it’s awfully good insurance against them. For your privately owned vehicles, I encourage you to follow the owner’s guide as best you can. For your compressed air system – from the compressor to the devices it provided compressed to (and everything in between) – there’s likely similar documentation to follow, and for good reason. Consider:

  • Air compressor maintenance. Failure to properly maintain a compressor can increase energy consumption by not keeping it operating as efficiently as possible. For example, just like not periodically replacing your car engine’s air filter will impact your gas mileage, failure to do the same for your compressor’s intake air filter will impact its production of compressed air.
  • Air leaks are costly. Not only do they waste the money you spent on running the compressor (a leak that’s equivalent to a 1/16″ diameter hole costs you over $700.00 annually – let me know if you want to do the math on that), your system pressure takes a hit too. Pressure drop caused by those leaks (plural because there’s rarely just one) can create what’s known as “false demand”, which costs you money as well: every 2psi increase in compressor discharge pressure makes for a 1% increase in power consumption. So, it’s really important to stay on top of them. Regularly scheduled surveys with an instrument like EXAIR’s Model 9207 Ultrasonic Leak Detector allows you to quickly find – and then fix – those leaks.
EXAIR Model 9207 Ultrasonic Leak Detector comes with everything you need to find out if you have a leak (with the parabolic disc, lower right) and then zero in on its exact location (with the tubular extension, bottom).
  • Filters, part 1: I already mentioned the compressor intake filter above, but the rest of the filters in the system need attention from time to time as well. Filter manufacturers typically call for replacing the element in a filter when pressure drop reaches a certain point. I’ve seen published values of 2-5psi for that. Of course, that may not occur at a convenient time to shut down everything downstream of that filter, so lots of folks replace those elements as part of planned maintenance evolutions that require depressurization of that particular part of the system anyway. Dirty filters mean you have to increase their inlet pressure to maintain the same outlet pressure you had when they were clean – and the same 1% increase in power consumption for a 2psi pressure increase applies here too.
  • Filters, part 2: most compressed air operated products have small passages that the air has to flow through, and without filtration, those can get clogged with dirt that the intake filter doesn’t catch, solid particulate from compressor ‘wear & tear’, and rust from header pipe corrosion, just to name the “usual suspects”. An argument could be made that installation & upkeep of properly rated Filter Separators at the point of use of these devices is part of those devices’ planned maintenance. In any case, it’s akin to the awfully good insurance against catastrophic failures I mentioned earlier.
Good engineering practice calls for point of use filtration and moisture removal, such as that provided by EXAIR Filter Separators.

Again, many of the components that make up a typical industrial compressed air system will have a manufacturer’s recommended maintenance schedule, but if they don’t, how can you properly plan for it? Monitoring of certain system parameters can be a valuable tool for determining how often some planned maintenance should be performed:

  • Power consumption of the compressor. The benefit of measuring & logging this on a regular basis is, if you see sudden changes, you can start looking for what’s causing them. Maybe a bearing or belt is wearing out, some leaks have popped up, or a filter’s clogged. In any case, it’s an indication that SOMETHING needs attention. Large industrial compressors might even have power monitoring in their control scheme. If not, there ARE other parameters you can measure…like:
  • Pressure and flow. EXAIR’s Pressure Sensing Digital Flowmeters make monitoring these parameters quick and easy. Managing the readings can be done with our USB Data Logger, or you can get it on your computer, via a Zigbee Mesh Gateway, with our Wireless Models.
EXAIR Digital Flowmeters are made for iron, copper, or aluminum compressed air pipe in sizes from 1/2″ to 8″ diameters. Options include Pressure Sensing, Wireless Output, USB Data Logger, Hot Tap, and Metric display.

At EXAIR, we’re committed to helping you get the most out of your compressed air system. If you’d like our help with that, give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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Featured image courtesy of Compressor1 – creative commons license

How Much $$$ are Compressed Air Leaks Costing You?!

Published on by Jordan T ShouseLeave a comment

All compressed air systems will have some amount of leakage. It is a good idea to set up a Leak Prevention Program.  Keeping the leakage losses to a minimum will save on compressed air generation costs, and reduce compressor operation time which can extend its life and lower maintenance costs.

The Compressed Air Challenge estimates an individual compressed air leak can cost thousands of dollars per year when using $0.07/kWh.

  • 1/16″ diameter hole in excess of $700/year
  • 1/8″ hole in excess of $2900/year
  • 1/4″ hole in excess of $11,735 per year

There are generally two types of leak prevention programs:

  • Leak Tag type programs
  • Seek-and-Repair type programs

If you walk through your facility, how many leaks can you hear? These are only the REALLY bad ones!!  So if we know that a large amount of compressed air is leaking, what do we do about it? ? A proper leak prevention plan is the key to success. Since these leaks are impossible to see and some cannot even be heard, you need a tool to help assist you. EXAIR’s model 9061 Ultrasonic Leak Detector is the right tool for the job. When compressed air leaks through a pipe, it creates an ultrasonic signature due to turbulence. While this sound is not always detectable by the human ear, this meter will allow you to locate leaks up to 20’ away by converting the ultrasonic signature into an audible sound.

The first step will be locating the leaks using an Ultrasonic Leak Detector and tagging them throughout the facility. Don’t let this overwhelm you!! If you have a larger facility, break it up into sections that can be completed in 1 day. This will allow you to decide which areas of the plant should be looked at first. Once you’ve located and tagged all of the leaks, rate them under two separate criteria so that you can prioritize what to fix first. Rate them based on the difficulty that it will take to fix them and also by the severity of the leak. Those that are severe yet easy to fix would make sense to begin fixing first. Those that may require a period of shutdown can be planned to fix at a more appropriate time.

9061 ULD

When you’ve had the opportunity to fix them, don’t just forget about it. When new piping is installed, new lines are added, or anything involving compressed air is installed there is the potential for new leaks to develop. Set this as one of your regular PM activities and complete your own compressed air audit once a year. Implementing the process and maintaining it are the keys to your success.

If you have questions about developing a leak program or how to use the Ultrasonic Leak Detector, give us a call. An Application Engineer will be happy to help with the process and recommend some other methods to save on your compressed air supply.

Jordan Shouse
Application Engineer

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Find Compressed Air Leaks with an Ultrasonic Leak Detector

Published on by EricKuhnash@EXAIR.comLeave a comment

The Ultrasonic Leak Detector (ULD) is a hand-held, high quality instrument that can locate costly leaks in a compressed air system. The definition of Ultrasonic as defined by Merriam-Webster is: “having a frequency above the human ear’s audibility limit of about 20,000 hertz —used of waves and vibrations.” The human hearing range depends on pitch and sound. Sound is a measure of how low or high the volume of loudness in terms of decibels (dBA) and “Pitch” is measured in Hertz (Hz).The overall spectra of the emitted ultrasonic sound is “white noise”, white noise is the broad band emission of sound.

Humans can detect sounds in a frequency range from about 20 Hz to 20 kHz. (Human infants can actually hear frequencies slightly higher than 20 kHz, but lose some high-frequency sensitivity as they mature; the upper limit in average adults is often closer to 15–17 kHz.)

The Model 9061 ULD is designed to locate the source of ultrasonic sound emissions and is used to find compressed air leaks. These ultrasonic sound emissions are converted by the ULD to a range that can be heard by humans. All this being said, the EXAIR ULD makes finding your air leaks fast and efficient.

The Model 9061 comes complete with with a hard shell plastic case, headphones, parabola, tubular adapter, tubular extension and a 9 volt battery. The ULD can be adjusted to filter out background noise typically heard in manufacturing environments by using the X1, X10 and X100 sensitivity settings. The “on/off” thumb wheel can be used for sensitivity adjustment within each of theses settings. The parabola or tubular extension can be attached to the ULD masking out background noise and finding the ultrasonic sounds being generated from the leaks.

Compressed air is an expensive cost center so using the ULD to detect and fix air leaks can not only be fun but also show a payback on investment with just one leak detection. The illustration below demonstrates just how a payback occurs.

EXAIR has many tools and accessories for your intelligent air needs and want to hear from you as we have Application engineers ready to assist your projects and compressed air challenges.

Eric Kuhnash
Application Engineer
E-mail: EricKuhnash@exair.com
Twitter: Twitter: @EXAIR_EK