Compressed Air End-Use Air Management System

Compressed air energy systems account for about 10 percent of all manufacturing electrical energy use and almost always have opportunities for improved efficiency. One unaddressed opportunity is control and monitoring of loads at large end-use machinery. These large end-use machines often have internal air leaks, losses, inefficiencies, and unproductive loads whether production is active or not. Remedying these losses is oftentimes prohibited or too costly if the interiors of these machines are difficult to access. A new plug-and-play product that can satisfy this need is known as an air management system which augments or replaces common, existing filter-regulator-lubricator assemblies. The new technology includes features that can be commissioned to reduce supply pressure and completely cut off airflow to these machines when they are idle and unproductive. These control features will generate dependable, reliable energy savings by reducing the load on the air compressors. Additionally, monitoring at these end-uses gives facility staff insight into their plant and machine health that would otherwise be unavailable. Savings for this technology were calculated on a per-unit basis for both a packaged frozen food host site and across a range of flow and runtime conditions that exist across the market. Across a range of conditions that would be seen in various plants, payback can be well under five years with savings exceeding 3,000 kWh per installed unit, depending on the end-use flowrate and idle time. In machinery with open pipe blowing and large idle flowrates in comparison to the working flow, payback can easily be under one or two years. These results suggest an uncommon and useful opportunity to develop a new workpaper for energy efficiency program portfolios. The emerging technology is broadly applicable across the industrial sector and is well-suited for rebate program support that could benefit both utilities and their customers.