By Ron Marshall Compressed air is one of the most expensive ways to supply energy to facility tools and equipment. This is due to the inherent inefficiencies in the process of compressing air — the biggest product is heat and the secondary output is compressed air. While this is disappointing, there are still things that […]

When controlling screw compressors, the goal is to try to keep all the running compressors fully loaded except one. And the one running partly loaded (called trim) is selected as the one having best part load efficiency characteristics. When there are only two or three compressors in a group, it is quite easy to set […]

Tsunami Compressed Air Solutions released four new products — adding more capacity and customization to the Air Dryers product line. Tsunami’s new products expand on the existing Pure Series Dryer line and include the Pure-1, a 5-cfm dryer, the Pure-3, a 10-cfm dryer, the Pure-7, a 25-cfm dryer, and the Pure-30, a 120-cfm dryer. All […]

Question: I need your advice about how to adjust the dew point for the dryers which are equipped with a dew point controller. Also, for those not having a controller, how can we determine which dew point is the best setting — -40 or -70? Answer: This is a complicated question. The method for adjusting […]

A plastics manufacturer was having constant trouble with his desiccant air dryers. No matter what he did, they would constantly set off dewpoint alarms, which was very annoying. He called in a compressed air auditor to have a look. The auditor shot temperatures and found that the discharge of the compressors was too hot. Outputs […]

VMAC surveyed 340 people in the service truck industry in 2022, asking them questions about their fleets and service truck equipment. The data shows 80% of professionals prefer rotary screw air compressors over reciprocating air compressors on their service vehicles. The 2021 and 2020 survey results also indicated a strong industry preference for rotary screw […]

John, the maintenance manager of a wood products company, was very proud of his Number 3 compressor. It has been operating for years, racking up more than 200,000 run hours — and was so trouble free, it was almost scary. Of course, John kept it maintained, changing oil and filters on a regular basis, fixing […]

ELGi Compressors USA Inc. (ELGi), a subsidiary of ELGi Equipments Limited, a compressor manufacturer, announced the strategic rebranding of its portable air compressor line in North America, previously branded as Rotair. ELGi acquired the Italian-based portable air compressor manufacturer, Rotair, in 2012. Rebranding “Rotair” to “ELGi” will strengthen the company’s presence in the North American […]

A large industrial plant fell on hard times and had to reduce their production shifts to only 8 hours per day, 5 days per week. The compressed air system remained running full time 24 hours a day, including weekends, due to the need to supply the plant’s dry fire system with air pressure. The total […]

What should you do when it comes time to decide if you should repair or replace your aging air compressor? There are a few things you should consider. Air compressors are like motor vehicles — if they are used continuously, hardly shutting down, they should not be expected to run for a long time without […]

Question: My compressed air dryer is rated at 100° F inlet air temperature. What will happen if the air temperature is lower than this? Answer: Having the air temperature lower than the dryer rating is a good thing. Actually, dryers are commonly rated at 100° F inlet temperature, 100 psi and 100° F ambient temperature. […]

Running out of pressure? Think about storage volume. Consider this — remember when you had your 10-speed bike with those thin tires? You could ride quite fast, but when it came to filling up the tubes to the proper pressure. all it took was a small shot on the fill valve to change the pressure […]

A sawmill ran a set of six large air-cooled compressors to feed their various processes. To cool the compressors, the air was drawn from outdoors and mixed with indoor air to keep temperatures from freezing the compressors in winter. This facility has a tough environment for cooling air because of the sawdust. To attempt to […]

Question: I’m a compressor salesperson. Lately, the large building tenders we’ve seen have been spec’d for two variable speed screw compressors to run together sharing the load. This would make sense to me if one was a 100% backup and they never ran together, but that does not seem to be the case. Everything I’ve […]

A large industrial company was having problems with its air quality.  Water was appearing as if at random at one of its most critical processes, causing instrumentation failures and contamination of the product.  This issue was difficult to understand because it looked like the refrigerated air dryer was working fine — and dewpoint looked good […]

Coval’s new CMS HD series of modular multi-stage vacuum pumps offers a solution for high suction flow rate vacuum handling of a wide variety of objects. The pumps are ideally suited for pick-up and transfer operations in applications such as handling of porous parts or emptying large-volume tanks. Jointly developed with system integrators and industrial […]

There is an old saying about a man with two watches who never knows what time it is. One wonders if this applies to having two flow meters? Fig. 1 shows the comparison of two thermal mass flow meters measuring the same compressed air stream. We can see there is a disparately between the readings, […]

Desperate times call for desperate measures — or at least that is what the maintenance personnel at a chemical plant thought when they had production outages caused by overheating of their water-cooled, lubricant free compressor. So, they rigged up some cooling using a compressed air powered ring jet nozzle (Fig. 1) and directed a flow […]

Atlas Copco has acquired the operating assets of the compressor business of Mesa Equipment & Supply Company (Mesa) located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and 19 employees will join Atlas Copco. The company sells oil-free and oil-injected compressors and offers parts and services across a broad range of customer segments. “Mesa has built a strong sales and […]

A compressed air auditor placed data loggers on a single compressor system with a fixed cycle heatless desiccant dryer.  The pressure at the compressor discharge and dry storage tank was also measured, along with the compressor input amps. On examination of the system profile, it was determined the compressor was rapid-cycling due to lower than […]

Question: On our air compressor, we have a drain at the bottom of what looks like a filter, located after the air cooler.  The drain failed so we turned it off … how important is it anyway? Answer: Here is the data you need to know about condensed water flow in compressed air systems (taken from […]

VMAC has released the UNDERHOOD40 – Van Series for 2022 Mercedes-Benz Sprinter vans with a 2.1 L turbo diesel engine. This latest UNDERHOOD40 rotary screw air compressor is engineered specifically for 2019 to 2022 Sprinter vans and produces up to 40 cfm of continuous air at 100 psi (150 psi max). “As customers upgrade their […]

In the compressed air world, the hottest thing in the market lately has been the introduction of variable speed drive controlled compressors. Being hot (as in popular) is good — but being hot as in temperature is not so great. These units, if installed appropriately, can stabilize the air pressure, and save significant amounts of […]

At this week’s National Fluid Power Association event, the annual International Economic Outlook Conference, Donna Ritson of DDR Communications shared results of an industry survey done for PMMI that looks at the future of robots and cobots for automation. Ritson’s firm had discussions with the leading robot manufacturers, robot suppliers, and integrators in the industry…