Compressed Air savings for Colgate Palmolive

The potential energy savings identified following an analysis of compressor installations at Colgate Palmolive in Manchester have led to the installation of an Enercon Energy Management System

The recently launched drives partnership between Control Techniques and EnergAir is already providing compressed air users with the means to offset the effects of the impending Climate Change Levy.

The potential energy savings identified following an analysis of compressor installations at Colgate Palmolive in Manchester have led to the installation of an Enercon Energy Management System, and a Unidrive variable speed drive package.

The total cost of the system will be paid back by the calculated annual energy savings of £26,043 in just 10 months.

"The recent media attention on the Climate Change Levy, and in particular on the role of compressors in energy saving, has made many companies aware that they are running their compressors inefficiently, and that they must do something about it", says Graham Coats, Sales Director of EnergAir Solutions.

However, what our recent logging and analysis exercise at Colgate Palmolive has revealed is that even reasonably efficient installations can provide substantial energy savings by improving the way they are operated with an Enercon Compressed Air Management System and a Control Techniques Unidrive drive package".

Colgate Palmolive has a total of six Ingersol Rand compressors at its Manchester site involved in this project, ranging from 11.6m3/min to 26.67m3/min.

Upgrades on the compressed air system had previously been carried out, but with the Climate Change Levy the company was keen to determine if these were optimised and EnergAir through its local distributor, North West Compressed Air, undertook a logging exercise to determine if this was the case.

The logging exercise identified that annual energy costs for running Colgate Palmolive's five compressors was estimated as ?221,107.

Out of this figure off-load, or non- productive running was recorded at 8879 kWh/wk.

This equated to ?20,776 / annum and represented the single largest opportunity for savings.

The facility to match compressor delivery pressure to site facility requirements provided the second major opportunity for cost reductions.

Here, a potential annual saving of ?5527 was identified.

This was based upon an average lowering of 0.5 bar at the compressors, equating to a 2.5% reduction in energy.

The mechanism for delivering these savings is a combination of EnergAir's Enercon Compressed Air Energy Management System and a retro-fit Unidrive drive package.

At the heart of the Enercon system is the "S" series controllers.

This is a specialised supervisory and control unit designed to provide centralised management control of up to a maximum of 12 compressors to eliminate expensive off-load running.

The standard monitoring, control and optimisation capabilities of Enercon "S" series controller are extended, using Enercon extension modules (or I/O), right across the Colgate Palmolive site to additional compressed air equipment, including compressed air dryers and filters.

This ensures total automated monitoring, control and optimisation - 24 hours a day - and guarantees that all the system components are used at their maximum efficiency.

Other major facilities provided by the Enercon system include visualisation software, (which is essential as the Colgate Palmolive compressor house is remote and usually unmanned), central client monitoring of the system, reporting and trending, and a 24 hour "Dial-Out" facility to the service provider for improved service support.

An additional, and key, element in the EnergAir management system installed at Colgate Palmolive is a Unidrive drive package from Control Techniques, EnergAir's drives partner in the recently announced distribution agreement between the two companies.

The Unidrive VTC is an open-loop, variable torque drive, specifically designed for fan and pump applications.

The same operating conditions of variable torque also mean that it is the ideal variable speed drive (VSD) for use as the optimising element in compressed air applications, matching demand to supply in cascaded compressor operations.

The Unidrive is retro-fitted to one of the two stage compressors in the main compressor house to convert it to variable speed (VS) operation.

The Enercon "S" series controller assigns this VS compressor a base load function and selects the other compressors in the installation relative to demand.

In this arrangement the VS compressor is always selected because of its ability to modulate its output and hence volume delivery (without loss of compressor efficiency) relative to demand.

This means that the other selected compressors can remain on maximum efficiency, full load operation.

"This early success with such a prestigious name highlights the potential for the partnership that we have concluded with EnergAir", said Jonathan Green, Control Techniques Marketing Operations Manager.

"This application shows that the integration of our drive systems to compressed air installations with variable load conditions can be very cost effective.

It also overcomes the perception in certain areas of the market that retro-fitting drive systems to improve compressor efficiency is too problematic.

Payback periods of less than 12 months, as demonstrated here, show that sensible energy management policies can offset the increased energy costs imposed by the Climate Change Levy.

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