The Path to Sustainable, Optimized Compressed Air Systems

Abstract

The traditional process of improving air systems originally depended on getting advice from compressor companies whose primary focus was improving the supply side with the motivation of selling equipment for profit. A different approach was found which focused on the return-on-investment (ROI) portion of projects. This led to an improved process which didn’t focus on smaller, incremental gains available on the supply side. Instead, it looked at demand improvements combined with better control of existing assets. That led to quite a few innovations in the cement industry on both the demand and control side. With as much promise as that had, the success rate of the projects was mixed. Re-audits at several plants showed that many of the gains were not sustained and that the business process of air improvements was missing critical steps. Those steps are called by different names by different companies including "ongoing optimization," "sustained savings," "persistent commissioning," and others. Regardless of the terminology, this process filled gap with the new steps required to optimize air systems and then keep the savings. This paper examines the progression of both business and technical aspects of air system improvements with a heavy emphasis on these new critical steps such information systems, operator education and state of the art point of use practice.