RATIONAL APPROACH TOWARDS THE COMPRESSED AIR FLOW- MONITORING

Many industries have started realizing their machine’s compressed air consumption varies fast in minutes
duration and in a wide band of 30 % seeing machine to machine comparison, during machine running, and leaking
thro machine pneumatic sub systems even during OFF time. So they installed flow meter to each machine to monitor
and target the compressed air consumption at the load point at the machine incoming side, and if they have say 10
machines they prefer to install in each machine to know the relative compressed air flow consumption in each
machine during its ON, Idle and OFF period of the day.

But unfortunately they have focussed thro lens at the load end at the machine air flow consumption during
ON, Idle, and Off period and look for the variations there. But they assumed the compressor gives the rated delivery
flow at given pressure and they didn’t’ install compressed air header flow meter in their compressor house utility.
Only 2 out of 10 industries went for this compressed header flow meter at the initial stages of project. Air flow meter
must be installed first, in the compressed header at the compressor house, can monitor daily the Watt per CFM;
totalized over 8, 16, and 24 hours of the day to read the shift to shift variation due to usage, day and night time
variation in compressed air generation, and in all the aspects of compressed air generation, distribution and in usage
or silently lost thro leakage during machine loading of On / Off / Idle / Isolated condition.

EXISTING COMPRESSED AIR FLOW MONITORING:-

The user industry installs flow meter as part of the machine set up and locates the flow meter based on the
site condition. Sometimes, it is mounted on the horizontal piping at the bottom most location of the machine and
gets congested with the pipe fittings immediately before and after. The flow meter instantly monitors the flow during
machine loading stages. Due to water ingress in the piping, the flow meter senses fault signal & shows phantom flow
of varying display of 3 to 10 cfm even at zero air flow in the pipe, the same gets totalized and on summing up, will
show as if excess air consumed here, that is more than compressed air generation, sometimes.

Flow meter wrong installations 1. Flowmeter inlet and outlet piping with reducer and elbows makes flow
turbulent. 2. Flowmeter fixed at bottom most location of machine at floor level mounting, prone to water trace.
Weaving Machine OEM PICANOL, provided near-vertical mounted Flowmeter as part of machine as std practice.

The compressed air generation from the compressor is supposed to be checked by the user industry once in
six months, by pump up capacity as tank filling method or alternatively by daily flow monitoring. Unfortunately this
generation efficiency was not checked till date, even at the time of its commissioning, in 9 out of 10 industries.

The plant energy monitoring software EnMS is hooked to hundreds of field process sensors in the plant. Later
this compressed air KW, flow & pressure variable is also added as one in hundred variables now. So the EnMS, the
plant energy management system picks up this compressed air instant flow once in few minutes and totalizes in
their system CPU. Compressed air is a dynamic utility process variable in any plant fast & widely varying in minutes,
but the EnMS CPU scan rate picks up at the given instant, the compressed air variable once in few minutes. This
totalization procedure at the main EnMS is prone to more errors since the signal picked up is delayed and varying
from Scan to count. Instead of this instant field output to CPU, the compressed air Flow Field Sensor to have totalizer
and give Accumulated Flow as output and Averaged Pressure output; same to be fed to existing EnMS in the plant.
COMPRESSED AIR FLOW, AS STAND-ALONE ENERGY MONITORING TOOL?

The compressor efficiency and compressed air health can be monitored by the input and output parameters
namely, the basic, power and mainly KW energy Electricity input parameters, and at the output in terms of
compressed air header flow at what pressure trends as 3-in-1 graphical analysis for conditional monitoring. The
compressed air flow needs to be compensated for delivery pressure and temperature above the reference point, as
defined in the meter. At the time of purchasing the flow meter itself, this spec has to be finalized and clarify with
the meter OEM, flow is auto compensated for pressure and temp during site commissioning stage itself.

At the incoming air intake of compressor, the Delta pressure monitor to tell us the air intake filter is clean and not
clogged, as this reduces the FAD. Many industries record FAD drops heavily by 10 % and more, often during running.
If you have not added that till date, please add now, this is one of the reasons for your compressor hunting at times.

COMPRESSED AIR FLOWMETER INSTALLATION ISSUES:-

1. The compressed air flow meter installation calls for strict dry air and this has to be ensured by removal of water
in the post air cooler, refrigeration dryer, air receiver, and a moisture separator with automatic drain valve ahead
of the flow meter, to be in place ahead of the flow meter.

2. The first installation of flow meter for any plant must be at the compressed air main header only. Many industries
first installed this daily-re-locate-able 1 inch flow meter in machine after machine and check for accumulated
flow values per machine per day. This may be cheap to start with, but you will not buy next!!

3. This type of 1 inch Insertion type flow meter is prone to errors due to wrong installation. The wrong installation
is because the upstream and downstream length of minimum 10 (allowing upto say 20 dia X, still better) x dia &
above not maintained for laminar smooth flow. Please avoid fittings like reducer, elbow, valve near to meter.

4. Next is, they had installed the flow meter horizontally with no slope in line end-to-end, and that too at the
bottom most point of the machine. This location allows more water drops to stay in the line across the flow
meter. So better to install the flow meter at a slope as recommended by the meter OEM so that at any time of
the day, the water does not stagnate around the flow meter, causing wrong readings.

5. Also the user to confirm with the meter OEM, that the location proposed for their meter is free from moisture
ingress, turbulent flow, and adheres to the installation procedure recommended by the meter OEM.

6. The meter reading is prone to inaccuracy when the reading is below 10 % of the rated flow of the meter, though
the user’s meter has a wide Turn-down Ratio. When the machine is in off / idling condition this displays few CFM
and the same is totalized to give more cfm flow per KW during daily workings. Meter will be accurate on steady
air flow around half the meter scale, and will measure inaccurately and that too here, phantom flow near zero.
7. When the header flow meter is installed in compressor house, this needs to be located at the downstream of air
receiver after dryer, on air smooth flow in the straight pipe without any restrictions up and downstream.

8. Whatever flow meter brand you are planning, you confirm with the machine OEM what will be the maximum,
minimum and average flow required for the machine, and discuss with meter OEM to size your air flow meter
so as to make the meter readable around 50 % and above for reliability and repeated accuracy. Also plan to buy
as full Flow Metering system with remote trending thro your windows compatible computers.

9. Plan to improve your compressed air layout with adequately sized receivers at tail end / Heavy air demand ends
of your compressed air layout and air bottles to buffer the machine’s sudden air demand instant requirements
thro pneumatic actuator mechanisms. The same to be done in consultation with the machine OEM.

10. Here the machine OEM also needs to proactive role in recommending smoothening compressed air flow in main
& sub-headers, planning to reduce his compressed air pressure demand to the minimum possible extent.

11. The cleaning application needs a dedicated feed air receiver to cater to all the cleaning energy efficient air guns,
and this has to be located suiting to the cleaning air demands at single or multiple but minimum locations.

12. The above ideas ensure smooth streamlined air flow to all the headers & machines and this also helps to air flow
monitoring accurately. This smooth flow at the header at optimum pneumatic velocity will ensure minimum
pressure drops and steady rated pressure drops instead of varying and wild pressure fluctuations.

RELATIVE COMPARISON OF MACHINES’ AIR CONSUMPTION:-

In the textile spinning mills segment, the compressed air leakage studied by mills show around 30 % on an
average. Each industry has now defined the leakage % norms. Please confirm you are within norms. There are many
reasons for this leakage, but water needs to be separated and removed in stages from compressed air line right from
the compr hood post air cooler, compr house receiver, Ref Dryer, Air receiver inside plant, till the machine tail end.

Consider the case of 37 KW / 50 HP Air Screw Compressor running in the industry, and this is running throughout
the three shifts, consuming around 40 to 45 units per hour and totalling 1000 units per day. The same industry is
very much aware that all their machines, do not consume full load air output of say 250 cfm air in all the 24 hours
totalized thro out the day, or it is escaping out thro leakage.

So Flow & pressure monitoring trends will prompt them to optimize the compressed air either at generation, or
at distribution or during usage or leakage time. We are spending 0.25 Crore Rs towards this compressed air annually,
why not we monitor this by computer compatible header flow meter costing around One Lakh only, to verify the SEC
Watt per CFM variation for the Rs.3.00 Crores Spent towards the Total Owning cost for the above 37 KW Air Screw
Compressor? Without flow meter, you cant’ visualize your daily air loss cumulated over 10 years as Rs.ONE crore.
But 7 out of 10 mills in the textile segment had implemented the monitoring approach by installing the
compressed air flow meter on each and every machine say at the 1 Inch incoming compressed air line to the machine
like the autoconers, especially to monitor the air leakage when the machine is in Idling or OFF condition.
 This will be say 4 cfm out of 40 cfm rated cfm per flowmeter size, 10 % of the rated measurement is beyond the
rated accuracy values, moreover, that 4 cfm is not at all there, line moisture gives a wrong signal to flow meter. So
totalizing the same value in many flow meters, will result in more inaccuracy of flow measurement and watt per cfm
averages. And only 2 out of 10 industries had installed header flow meter to macro view their compressed air, citing
the only reason, it was costly. But now that also has become affordable and costing around One Lakh of Rupees only.

CONCLUSION:-

Compressed Air user industry, during the installation itself of compressed air, needs to provide Flow meter on
compressor commissioning date. The flow meter is the vital tool to determine the TOC, Total Owning cost of
compressor nowadays. We the Energy Auditors insist on Monitoring the Input& output for any utility. But the
industry listens to the compressor OEM to decide to alter, expand, add-on, or replace the existing utility.

Many industries bought now, the Energy-efficient compressor. But, atleast you need two compressors one as Active
and other as Standby for your breakdown-free running of compressors. Some industries are always on TENSION,
since they have only one compressor to cater to entire process, hoping the single compressor must not breakdown
during industry’s normal run. So invest in standby compressor to suit to your process. Install your compressors as
per your machine OEM & process experts, and in sync with the Best & Safe Operating practices of compressors.

The origin of In-efficiency starts from the installation and commissioning stage only, if not installed correctly. To
verify what you have purchased, installed and commissioned is as per the spec given by the OEM, you mandatorily
need KWH meter at input and CFM meter at the output header. For your kind information, this is not only applicable
to compressors; this is very much applicable to all your utility and production equipment.

And any compressor modernization is based on the paper working only based on the guess-estimated CFM per
KW as given by the compressor OEM. Instead, when the industry needs to implement any compressor or compressed
air energy conservation, the first step they must now take it to install the compressed air header flow meter TODAY
and analyze the existing machine’s running efficiency in generation, distribution and usage. This needs to be observed
daily, weekly and monthly before and after the replacement or retrofit study.