Saint-Gobain Containers is the world's largest building materials company, and a global specialist in the production of high-performance materials and glass containers. In North America, more than 350 companies employ 22,000 positions.
Its products include wine bottles and other containers for the food and beverage industry. Compressed air needs to be used during the bottling process, in some way, or in every production facility.
Leaks, a common problem in compressed air systems, create inefficiencies and increase production costs. Saint-Gobain Containers set out to find an efficient way to detect system leaks that would not require a large capital investment in monitoring and management equipment.
The California facility, which produces millions of wine and champagne bottles each year, designed a low-cost system using data loggers and flow meters. Companies investing under $5,000 in monitoring equipment are expected to end up earning tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual savings. The Saint-Gobain container is estimated to reduce 10 to 50 cubic feet per minute (CFM) from each piece of equipment placed into the monitoring system.
The DOE Department of Energy recommends that monitoring
compressed air is an important tool in a wide range of industrial processes. But these systems use a lot of energy, so if they're not operating at capacity -- and if there's an air leak, energy costs can mount. Therefore, the DOE recommends that all office facilities with compressed air systems adopt an aggressive leak detection and prevention program, with quarterly system monitoring.
Besides wasting energy, leaks create other problems. They can cause system pressure to drop, making the tool less efficient to operate. Or a leak could make the equipment cycle too frequently, leading to higher maintenance costs and shortened equipment life.
Compressed air systems in good working order should not lose more than 10% of their air and generating capacity, but it is not unusual for systems to lose as much as 20% to 30%. Leaks are more likely to occur in joints and fittings, and can usually be avoided with a simple tightening or replacement of the joint.
Data Loggers to Detect Equipment Leaks
In complex or large systems, leak monitoring and detection systems can be expensive and time-consuming. Knowing this, an energy engineer, Greg Rhames of Saint-Gobain Containers in California, set out to find a low-cost way to identify and reduce energy waste from three 1,250-horsepower compressors running 24/7.
Rhames decided to pursue what he described as monitoring from an "equipment localization perspective." This goes against the more common approach of bringing different types of compressed air systems close to the meter supply side of large industries. Instead of monitoring the entire system output, he attempted to analyze the performance of individual devices, pinpointing the source of the problem through measurements made by the data logger.
"Instead of looking at this from 300,000 feet, we're doing it from 1,000 feet," he said. "You can get reliable results by moving the equipment and working you're on the supply side with monitoring. If you're monitoring from the supply side, you're not solving the problem causing air leaks downstream."
Rhames designed a monitoring system that started using a HOBO® Energy Logger H22-001, U12-006 (new models UX120-006, UX20-006M)
Portable data logger that includes the snap-in "FlexSmart" module to convert signals from virtually any type of sensor. 15-channel data logger H22-001 can measure compressed air T-CDI-5200-10S, T-CDI-5400-20S, measure pressure T-ASH-G2-100, T-ASH-G2-200, T-ASH -G2-500, kWh output T-VER-8044-100, T-VER-8051-300, T-VER-8053-800, T-WNB-3D-240, T-WNB-3D-480, T- WNB-3Y-208, T-WNB-3Y-208-P, Voltage T-CON-ACT-150, T-CON-ACT-300, Current T-VER-971BP-200, T-VER-H970-200, CSV-A8, CTV-A, CTV-B, CTV-C, CTV-D, CTV-E, air velocity T-DCI-F900-LO, T-DCI-F900-LP, T-DCI-F900-SO, T-DCI-F900-SP, temperature TMC1-HD, TMC20-HD, TMC50-HD, TMC6-HC, TMC6-HD, TMC6-HE and a series of other parameters. For the purpose of Saint-Gobain Containers, Rhames required data loggers of CFM consumption for each piece of equipment in the plant, using compressed air. To this end, Rhames installed a compressed air flow meter T-CDI-5200-10S series with a remote display, connected to the FlexSmart module. As the project continues, each additional meter of compressed air receivers throughout the plant will be installed to allow for departmental isolation and air pressure monitoring systems.
Rhames placed the centralized facility control panel for the two data loggers. During the installation, he conducted a 10-minute recorded test and collected the results to verify that all components were operating correctly. Then he redeployed the logging devices and made them log for 24 hours. He recorded airflow measurements every two seconds.
Since the data loggers are portable, he can take the modules, bring the loggers, and have them come to his office to download the data from Onset's HOBOware® professional graphing and analysis software BHW-PRO-CD package. The software provides a quick readout of the collected data and can be exported to Microsoft Excel, which he uses to manipulate the information. Using spreadsheet and graphical formats, he took a baseline measurement, studied the effects of various corrective actions, compared them to historical records, and established a baseline. Most mechanical cycles range from 2 to 15 seconds, depending on what's happening. By stretching the data for days, anomalous systems become apparent.
Losses in individual parts of the equipment should not exceed 20 CFM. If there's a loss of more than 10 CFM, "you should analyze the equipment and see that you're losing air. Find it, fix it, and get it back to tolerance," he said.
"Data to date shows we lose 20 to 30 CFM because of leaks," he added. "It's amazing how much waste occurs in a piece of equipment. The data loggers make it immediately apparent."
Big savings quickly
using energy logging equipment, Saint-Gobain Containers identified the worst compressed air leaks and repaired them, resulting in a 10 CFM reduction in compressed air waste. Rhames calculates that the facility will save $2.24 per CFM of high-pressure air held. As a result, "the savings are huge -- potentially tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars a year," he said.
Working on a small budget, Rhames avoids the delays common in most businesses when requesting large capital expenditures. He was able to get projects up and running in days, not months or years. The presence of data provided by the data logger allows quick response to a leak. As a result, Saint-Gobain Containers was able to start saving energy and money—longer than it would with a larger, more expensive system.
Data logging will now be used as standard operating procedure for the equipment. The collected data and comparisons, after leaks are discovered and fixed, will be applied to achieve a standard Minimum Consumption (CFM) benchmark for all similar devices.
Data logger systems have proven to be an effective way to provide real-time analysis, previously only achieved with larger, more expensive systems.
