Industrial Equipment Users Discover Energy Efficient Direct Drive Air Compressors
Foregoing belts and gears, direct-drive air compressor systems yield electrical cost savings of up to 8%.
Michigan City, IN (PRWEB via PR Web
Direct) March 30, 2005 -- As upper management achieves increased
productivity from its headcount by mandating 40-hour-plus workweeks, today's
facility managers now stand equally responsible for upping an organization's
bottom line by seeking increased energy efficiency from plant equipment. In a
case of "doing more with less," plant engineers are increasingly turning to
direct-drive electric air compressor systems that extract greater power out of
every single watt, raising the bar for efficiency in industrial equipment.
Recent innovations by
manufacturers such as Sullivan- Palatek, a manufacturer of direct drive rotary
screw air
compressors, allow an array of manufacturing and processing plants to profit
from greater energy savings in their electric motor-driven pressurized-air
operations.
The efficiency benefits of these new-technology air
compressor systems stem from two important design improvements. Primarily, the
Sullivan-Palatek compressors utilize a direct-drive rotary screw, which
eliminates unnecessary moving parts such as belts, gears and pulleys, reducing
the parasitic losses attributed to belts (4-8% loss) and gears (3-5%). Secondly,
these compressors employ larger rotors in the air-end assemblies that, in
effect, offer a "higher displacement" so they turn slower while producing an
equivalent amount of cubic feet per minute of air than smaller units.
"You get more air, at higher pressure, using less horsepower, with the
newer direct-drive compressors," says Steve Van Loan, President at
Sullivan-Palatek. "Other electric air compressors, particularly in the 5-100 hp
range, are belt or gear driven. However, by omitting the unneeded gears and
pulleys you can reduce drive-line friction and improve energy efficiency from
3-8%."
As an example, manufacturers requiring a specific amount of air
flow for a given process can use a direct drive rotary screw air compressor that
only requires 100 hp, as opposed to needing a belt or gear-driven system that
might require 112 HP to produce the same amount of air. For a compressor running
24/7, the savings can amount to over $7000 annually, figured at the DOE national
average of 8.6 cents per kWh.
Sullivan-Palatek manufactures industrial equipment such as electric and diesel driven high
performance rotary screw air compressors.
Steve Van Loan
e-mail
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/3/prweb223451.htm