With operating costs continuing to rise, UK manufacturers are under increasing pressure to improve efficiency. Higher energy, material and labour costs are putting margins under strain, prompting businesses to look more closely at where waste can be reduced.
For facilities using pneumatic equipment, compressed air should be an important part of that conversation.
Compressed air is clean, versatile and ideally suited to countless automation tasks. However, generating it requires electricity, and inefficient pneumatic systems can consume considerably more energy than is actually required to perform the task.
The challenge is to retain the benefits of pneumatics while reducing unnecessary energy consumption.
Start by understanding where the air goes
One of the biggest challenges with compressed air is that waste can often go unnoticed.
A small leak may appear insignificant, but multiplied across hundreds of fittings, tubes, valves and actuators operating over thousands of production hours, the financial impact can become significant.
Leak detection should therefore form part of routine preventative maintenance. But leaks are only one part of the issue.
Is the system operating at a higher pressure than necessary? Are cylinders oversized for the application? Is compressed air being used unnecessarily for blowing or cleaning? Does equipment remain pressurised during periods when production has stopped?
Each presents an opportunity to reduce consumption.
Correctly sized actuators, efficient air preparation, high-integrity fittings and suitable control technology can all help reduce the amount of compressed air needed to achieve the same productive output.
Monitoring technology can also provide engineers with greater visibility of consumption. Flow sensors and intelligent pneumatic technologies make it possible to identify unexpected changes in air usage and use that information to support maintenance and efficiency improvements.
The principle is simple: before a business can reduce compressed air consumption effectively, it needs to understand where that air is being used and where it is being wasted.
Could we reuse air instead of wasting it?
During normal cylinder operation, compressed air is used to create movement before being exhausted to atmosphere. By that point, energy has already been used to generate and compress the air, so releasing it means that energy is effectively lost.
Camozzi Automation UK is introducing the Pneu-Saver, a new pneumatic energy-saving solution designed to recover and reuse air that would otherwise be exhausted. Developed for double-acting pneumatic cylinders, it can reduce compressed air consumption by approximately 45% in suitable applications.
This figure has been verified in real-world applications using before-and-after air consumption readings taken with an electronic air consumption meter.
Rather than simply discharging compressed air after each movement, Pneu-Saver recirculates it within the pneumatic circuit, reducing the amount of fresh compressed air required from the main supply.
Turning air savings into cost savings
The potential impact becomes clearer when this is applied to a typical production scenario. As an example, consider a machine operating five pneumatic cylinders with 100 mm bores and strokes ranging from 100mm to 1,000mm. Operating at 6 bar, between two and ten cycles per minute, across two eight-hour shifts per day, five days a week and 51 weeks of the year, the demand for compressed air quickly adds up.
Based on an electricity cost of £0.27 per kWh, Camozzi’s calculator estimates that introducing a Pneu-Saver to this example could save approximately 170,756m³ of compressed air per year, equivalent to an estimated £5,356 in annual energy costs. The calculation represents an air saving of approximately 141.7 litres per cycle.
While every application will differ according to cylinder sizes, operating pressure, cycle frequency and production hours, the example demonstrates how relatively small savings on each individual movement can accumulate into substantial reductions over the course of a year.
The concept has also been developed with retrofit applications in mind. Rather than requiring manufacturers to redesign complete machines or replace existing pneumatic systems, one Pneu-Saver can be incorporated into suitable machinery with relatively little disruption.
For applications with sufficient compressed air consumption and operating hours, these savings mean the investment could potentially achieve payback within 12 months.
Technology is only part of the solution
Improving pneumatic efficiency cannot depend on components alone.
Some of the most effective savings can come from giving the people responsible for specifying, operating and maintaining equipment a better understanding of how compressed air behaves.
An engineer who understands the relationship between pressure, flow, cylinder sizing and air consumption is better equipped to recognise an inefficient system. Maintenance teams that understand common sources of air loss can identify problems earlier, while designers who consider energy consumption during machine development can avoid inefficiency being built into equipment in the first place.
That is why energy efficiency has become an important part of Camozzi Automation UK’s pneumatic training programme.
Its dedicated Safety & Energy Saving in Pneumatics course combines pneumatic safety with practical methods for reducing compressed air consumption. Delivered by Steve Partington at Camozzi’s UK headquarters in Nuneaton, the one-day programme covers areas including optimising compressed air systems, reducing consumption and identifying opportunities to apply energy-saving technology such as Pneu-Saver.
The aim is not simply to teach delegates about individual products, but to encourage them to look at pneumatic systems differently.
Small efficiencies become significant savings
There is unlikely to be one universal answer to the challenge of industrial energy costs.
Instead, manufacturers should examine where consumption can be measured, challenged and improved.
For pneumatic systems, that means finding leaks, using the correct pressure, correctly sizing components, improving maintenance, monitoring consumption and questioning established practices, including whether compressed air that has already been generated really needs to be thrown away.
Every cubic metre of compressed air that does not need to be generated represents energy that does not need to be purchased.
And in an environment where manufacturers are being asked to achieve more with increasingly expensive resources, wasting less may prove to be one of the most valuable improvements available.
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