Tip top compressed air with Beko Technologies

1. Get knowledgeable about your system. Understand the variations in flow across the day, week, month and even year if your business is seasonal. Invest in a survey which is based on the flow through the system not a clamp on the motor phases which tells whether the compressor is on load or not. Free surveys offered out by many companies are by very definition "valueless" and are a marketing tool designed to sell products

2. Control the system. This is especially important with more than one compressor and possibly several different types and makes and sizes of compressor. The objective is to stop "off load" running, which is cripplingly expensive. An intelligent control system will match the flow with the correct combination of compressors without a high and costly range of cut in/out pressure.

3. Match the pressure and air quality to the requirement. Many systems are operating at the highest pressure and quality required rather than having more than one stream of compressed air quality and pressure. For example, if only 10 per cent of the compressed air usage is at 10 bar (g) and the rest at 6 bar (g), then have a separate stream of high pressure. Equally, if 100 per cent oil-free air is required in one area then have a dedicated system for this via an oil-free compressor, a carbon tower or a catalytic converter.

4. Check and recheck the leakage. There are leaks in the best managed factory because of badly designed pipe work stressing joints, acidic condensate not being removed, operator carelessness or lack of understanding. Leaks are easy to fix via ultra sonic detectors. Factories can easily waste 20 per cent of the compressed air they generate. The important thing to remember is that testing needs doing every year... look at it as an MOT for your system and pre-plan it annually

5. Do the maintenance. Sounds simple, but most breakdowns and inefficiencies come as a result of mistreating what is fundamentally reliable, well-designed equipment. A very good example of this would be a carbon filter taking aerosol and smell from filtered technically oil-free air. These filters have a short life in the hundreds of hours and are frequently found to be completely ineffective because they sit next to other filters which have life spans of thousands of hours and the required change out is ignored.

6. If you have compressed air purging, stop now! This could apply to a desiccant dryer or an air line which is used for blowing down. Except in special circumstances this waste of compressed air should be stopped. For dryers there are now many manufacturers offering zero purge dryers, and when calculations are made the payback period against a purging dryer can be dramatic. Solenoid drains which are designed to open on a preset time interval are quite simply inefficient because the amount of condensate changes throughout the day, month and year with temperature and humidity changes. There is one thing sure: the timer interval will nearly always be wrong. Zero-loss level-sensing drains should be installed on filters, dryers and receivers and other drainage points.

7. Manage pressure drop. Another major wastage of energy is via losses in pressure. This is sometimes because the system was badly designed and the filters were sized at the limit, or the pipe size was not allowing for any future extra usage of compressed. Don't use unnecessary components in the system. Again this may seem obvious, but a water separator at point of use is redundant in a correctly designed dry air system, and will only add to pressure drop. Similarly, be sure to match the oil filters to the required quality for the process and not fit any finer than necessary for the same reason.

8. Horses for courses. Make sure that the adviser is a specialist on his subject. The Area Managers at Beko Technologies are all technical people with more than 10 years' experience in compressed air systems. They are expert on condensate management and air treatment. Please do not come to us for compressors, but equally we respectfully suggest that if you want the best advice you go to the specialist.

To learn more about the treatment of compressed air and management of condensates please visit www.beko-technologies.co.uk.