Tag: education

Feeling Exhausted?

Published on by Brian FarnoLeave a comment
Our current calendar.

The school year has started here in Cincinnati. For some families, it’s the very first year in the school system; for others, it’s the last. Every year in between brings its own mix of emotions. Personally, I look forward to the sports and events, watching the camaraderie grow between my daughters, their friends, and their teams.

This year, we have a 10th, 7th, and 5th grader. One is about to get her learner’s permit, one is trying out for school volleyball, and one is in her final year of elementary. It feels like a big year all around. The pace of activities has been so fast that it’s hard to fully process what’s happening—and that same thing can easily happen in our work lives.

At home, my wife and I often feel like we’re treading water, bouncing from one thing to the next. We use downtime not just to catch our breath, but also to talk through what’s working, what’s not, and how to prepare better for the weeks ahead. When we skip those conversations, tension builds, and we end up storming as a team. The same holds true in a production environment: without regular evaluation and planning, the whole system suffers.

In manufacturing, output rarely stops. Even when a sector halts for a planned shutdown, the project list is carefully managed to minimize disruption. The focus is always on keeping production moving—whether that means picking up speed, adding shifts, or running longer hours. But smooth production depends on proactive planning.

Take compressed air systems as an example. A simple habit like measuring pressure drop across filters can prevent costly downtime. By installing pipe tees and pressure gauges upstream and downstream of filters, you can monitor performance. Once the differential hits 5 psig, it’s time to plan for an element replacement. Adding this to a maintenance schedule and aligning it with your purchasing cycle turns an unexpected expense into a controlled, predictable one.

Pressure gauges and filters with indicators are both great options for monitoring filter performance.

Just like meal prep and calendar reviews keep our family life running more smoothly, preventive maintenance and equipment monitoring keep production lines efficient. For parents entering the whirlwind of school activities—hang in there. Build a community with the other parents around you. It truly takes a village, just like it takes every department working together to deliver a finished product.

Brian Farno, MBA – CCASS Application Engineer

BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF

Downtime: It Isn’t Always BAD

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When you say Downtime in an industrial or manufacturing setting, it may easily carry a negative connotation. This means that the output of production is not happening and input to production has halted as well. If this is not planned, it is absolutely a worst-case scenario. In our personal lives, though, downtime generally doesn’t have a negative meaning behind it. That’s the time to disconnect and recharge to maximize your output after you return to production and that is exactly what I had the luxury to do recently. This is also a message I received from a person I look up to and trust in their experiences. Vacation time can be looked at similar to a preventative and planned downtime of equipment. Without it we just wear down and eventually productivity grinds to a halt. While hanging out at a lake with my daughters this past week, I helped them hone their fishing skills. They each baited their own hooks with worms and chose their spots. We completely slayed some bluegills, and released every single one of them.

The calm of a storm rolling in when you have nothing to do is serene.

Prescribed maintenance, preventative maintenance, vacations all help to build back into the production of whatever good or service the company provides. The entire production of a facility all starts with the utilities, energy, water, compressed air, steam, other compressed gases, and the personnel. If your power input isn’t maintained, monitoring connections and disconnects, you can find yourself with a lack of service, resulting in dangerous situations. City water is often required for processes or for the facility to function properly, even an office building needs it for plumbing, fire suppression, and drinking. Steam, compressed gases and compressed air may all be required by the processes.

Servicing the compressed air where it starts is one of the most critical steps in operating a compressed air system. Making sure that your compressor has the minimum downtime, all starts with the preventative and prescriptive maintenance. One of the first tasks should always be changing and monitoring the intake air filter. Like Russ Bowman said a while back in his blog, take a deep breath, if you sneeze or smell something that is from the intake air your nose just took in from the surrounding area. That’s even after your nose hair has already partially filtered air intake. Your compressor is no different. If you let it suck up debris, dust, and pollen, then it is eventually going to have a failure. Instead of sneezing, it may burn up a vane, valve, scroll or screw. That is going to be a considerably higher cost and longer downtime than just performing the manufacturer’s listed items to maintain optimal performance.

The compressor shown above according to the caretaker receives a regular change on the airfilter every month. This is just before the cleaning and changeover. Not only do they change the filter, they make sure to clean the entire housing inside and out. That’s one of the ways this compressor has lasted with minimal downtime over the past 20 years.

If you want to learn more about other key maintenance items in your compressed air system, please contact an Application Engineer today.

Brian Farno, MBA – CCASS Application Engineer

BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF

Drying Supply Side Air With Heat of Compression Dryers

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The supply side of a compressed air system has many critical parts that factor in to how well the system operates and how easily it can be maintained.   Dryers for the compressed air play a key role within the supply side are available in many form factors and fitments.  Today we will discuss heat of compression-type dryers.

Heat of compression-type dryer- Twin Tower Version

Heat of compression-type dryers are a regenerative desiccant dryer that take the heat from the act of compression to regenerate the desiccant.  By using this cycle they are grouped as a heat reactivated dryer rather than membrane technology, deliquescent type, or refrigerant type dryers.   They are also manufactured into two separate types.

The single vessel-type heat of compression-type dryer offers a no cycling action in order to provide continuous drying of throughput air.  The drying process is performed within a single pressure vessel with a rotating desiccant drum.  The vessel is divided into two air streams, one is a portion of air taken straight off the hot air exhaust from the air compressor which is used to provide the heat to dry the desiccant. The second air stream is the remainder of the air compressor output after it has been processed through the after-cooler. This same air stream passes through the drying section within the rotating desiccant drum where the air is then dried.  The hot air stream that was used for regeneration passes through a cooler just before it gets reintroduced to the main air stream all before entering the desiccant bed.  The air exits from the desiccant bed and is passed on to the next point in the supply side before distribution to the demand side of the system.

The  twin tower heat of compression-type dryer operates on the same theory and has a slightly different process.  This system divides the air process into two separate towers.  There is a saturated tower (vessel) that holds all of the desiccant.  This desiccant is regenerated by all of the hot air leaving the compressor discharge.  The total flow of compressed air then flows through an after-cooler before entering the second tower (vessel) which dries the air and then passes the air flow to the next stage within the supply side to then be distributed to the demand side of the system.

The heat of compression-type dryers do require a large amount of heat and escalated temperatures in order to successfully perform the regeneration of the desiccant.  Due to this they are mainly observed being used on systems which are based on a lubricant-free rotary screw compressor or a centrifugal compressor.

No matter the type of dryer your system has in place, EXAIR still recommends to place a redundant point of use filter on the demand side of the system.  This helps to reduce contamination from piping, collection during dryer down time, and acts as a fail safe to protect your process.  If you would like to discuss supply side or demand side factors of your compressed air system please contact us.

Brian Farno
Application Engineer
BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF

Heat of compression image: Compressed Air Challenge: Drive down your energy costs with heat of compression recovery: https://www.plantservices.com/articles/2013/03-heat-of-compression-recovery/

The Basics of a Compressed Air Leak Detection Program

Published on by Brian FarnoLeave a comment

It is no surprise that compressed air can be a costly utility for industrial facilities. It can easily chip away at the bottom line finances if used carelessly and without planning. This is one of the leading reasons we have educated continuously on how to ensure this vital utility is used with safety and conservation in mind. If we have installed all engineered solutions at the point of use throughout a facility, there is still more to be saved. One of the easiest things to do with a utility system inside of a facility is to leave it unchecked and undocumented until something goes wrong. This does not have to be the scenario and in fact, starting a leak detection program in a facility can help to save up to 30% of the compressed air generated.

Leaks cost money!

That’s right, up to 30% of the compressed air being generated in an industrial facility can be exhausting out to ambient through leaks that run rampant throughout the facility. When the point of use production is still working fine, then these sorts of leaks go unnoticed. Another common occurrence goes something like this example: Maybe there is a leak bad enough to drop the packaging line pressure slightly, this may get fixed by bumping up a pressure regulator, production is back up and it is never thought of again. In all actuality this is affecting the production more and more with each leak.

The leaks add additional load onto the supply side. The compressor has to generate more air, the dryer needs to process more air, the auto drains dump more moisture, it all ads up to additional wear and tear also known as false load. All of this additional load on the system can add more maintenance which if left undone can result in system shut downs. One way to begin to eliminate this false load is to deploy a leak detection program. The steps are fairly easy.

Similar to our 6 Steps to Compressed Air Optimization, you start with a baseline of how much air the system is seeing and operating pressures. This begins the documentation process which is critical to the success of the program. Next, acquire an ultrasonic leak detector (ULD) and a layout of your compressed air system piping. Utilizing the ULD, test all compressed air piping along with equipment, and tag each leak that is detected. Next, begin to repair all of the tagged leaks and document the amount of compressed air savings with each repair. This again, is more documentation which leads to giving a quantitative value to the return on investment of the program. Lastly, schedule a follow up scan that recurs on a pre-determined basis to prevent the system from returning to it’s original leaky state.

EXAIR Ultrasonic Leak Detector

If you would like to discuss starting a leak detection program in your facility or have questions about the ULD or any point of use compressed air product, please reach out to an Application Engineer today.

Brian Farno
Application Engineer
BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF