How to detect the compressed air, gas and vacuum leaks and find hidden profits

However, many of the compressed air, gas, and vacuum system are affected by the problem such as wear and improper maintenance, it can cause a lot of waste - unable to prevent leakage.These leaks may be hidden behind the machine, join point, elevated fixed pipe or hose burst pipes or wear is likely to be leaking.Waste will increase rapidly, and it may even cause downtime.

The high cost of waste air

According to theThe U.S. department of energy (doe)Data, compressed air piping a 1/8 of an inch (3 mm) holes can cause additional costs up to $2500 a year.The U.S. department of energy estimates that may be a lack of maintenance of the average American factory waste due to leakage of the compressed air total capacity of up to 20%.The New Zealand government in its sustainability "target" project estimates, system leaks can be 30% to 50% of the compressed air system capacity.Rapid detection of compressed air, gas, and the vacuum leak directly lead to the discovery of hidden profits.Air leak can also lead to capital costs, rework, downtime or quality problems, and increases the maintenance costs.

To compensate for loss of pressure caused by leakage, the operator usually by buying compressor specification more than need for excessive compensation, which require a lot money, and would result in higher energy costs.System leakage will cause the system pressure is too low, leading to run on compressed air equipment malfunctions.This may lead to production delays, unplanned downtime, quality problems, shorten the service life and increase maintenance for compressor unnecessary cycle.

For example, an American manufacturer of maintenance manager, said a pneumatic torsion tools if they encounter the problem of insufficient pressure, can lead to defective products."Improper torque equipment, lack of torque and torque is too big, can lead to product recalls.This will lead to need to put more time into should be a very standard process, "he said."This is the loss of profit and equipment lost a sum of money.In the worst case, we will encounter losses due to not delivery demand."

Utilities, industry and government believed that compressed air system has the potential to achieve cost savings, it is not surprising.Leak leads to waste.Fix the leak allows operators to save cost, and can prevent the system utilities have to use more than need.

It is not easy to find and repair leaks

Many factories and facilities are not leak detection plan.It is not easy to find and repair leaks.Quantitative amount of waste and determine the cost need by energy experts or consultants to implement, they use energy analyzer and recorder to audit your air system.To eliminate the leakage by systematic calculation to achieve annual cost savings, they can develop a strong business plan, to carry out such projects.

Compressed air system energy audit is usually need to industry, government and nongovernmental organizations (ngos).Compressed Air Challenge (CAC) is one of the partnership, is these types of voluntary group collaboration.The only goal is to provide product neutral information and education material, to help the industry in the generation and the sustainable use of compressed air to achieve higher efficiency.

Why ultrasonic leak check inefficient

Unfortunately, the mainstream of leak detection is quite original.Is to listen to see if there is an age-old method hiss and sprayed in the region of the suspected leak soap and water, in fact, in many environments could not hear hiss, and soapy water can make the scene become dirty, slip and is likely to cause dangerous.

Used to find the compressor leakage current professional tools is a kind of ultrasonic sound detector, it is a portable electronic device, to identify associated with air leakage of high frequency sound.Typical ultrasonic detector can help find leaks, but very time consuming to use, the need to spend more time in the maintenance of other key machines, maintenance personnel usually only use them during the scheduled downtime.These devices also ask the operator to close to the device to find the leak, which makes difficult to behind the ceiling or other equipment such as hard hit areas.

Use soap and water or ultrasonic detector to find leakage, in addition to the time consuming, or use these method to find the high equipment leakage may also exist the following safety problems.Climb the ladder or around the equipment below the drill to the device may be dangerous.

Compressed air leak detection of revolutionaries

If there is a leak detection technology can be in a noisy environment in 50 metres precise positioning leak location, and don't need to close the equipment?雷竞技appFluke developed an industrial camera can do this.Industria雷竞技appl maintenance managers will be a FlukeIi900 Sonic Industrial ImagerKnown as committed to "revolutionary" found that the compressed air leakage.

The new sound waves industry imaging can detect a wider frequency range than conventional ultrasonic equipment, it USES the new SoundSight ™ visual scanning techniques to provide enhanced air leakage, similar to the infrared thermal imaging to detect hot spots.

Ii900 includes a sound made up of many tiny ultrasensitive microphone array, at the same time testing and ultrasonic sound waves.Ii900 can identify potential leak location of sound source, and then using a proprietary algorithm that will be resolved as a leak sound.Results generated a SoundMap ™ image, this is a map of images in the visible light color, can accurately display the location of the leak.The final result in the form of static images or real time video display on the 7 "LCD screen.Ii900 can save as many as 999 image files or video files, 20 to record or compliance purposes.

Can quickly scan the larger area, compared with other methods, it helps to find leak position significantly faster.It also can filter the intensity and frequency range.A team for a large manufacturer recently used two ii900 prototype device was found in one day 80 compressed air leakage points.Maintenance manager, said in a traditional way to take a few weeks to find so many leak.By quickly find and repair the leakage, the staff also saved the potential downtime, in the factory, the production capacity loss estimates about $100000 per hour.

Find the location of the leak:

• The connector
• hose
• The pipe
• joint
• Threaded pipe joint
• Quick disconnect joint
• FRL (filter, regulator, lubricator combination)
• Condensate collector
• The valve
• The flange
• The seals
• Pneumatic fixed slot

How much air you wasted?

Control the compressed air, gas, and the first step in the vacuum system leakage is estimated leakage load.Some leakage (below 10%) is expected to appear.Anything beyond the scope of the condition is treated as waste.The first step is to identify your current leakage load, so that you can use it as a benchmark to compare the improvement effect.

Assessment of leakage and reliable method of load control system based on you.If your system is equipped with a start/stop controls, only time without having to use the system to start the compressor, after work or after work.Then get compressor cycle of several readings to determine whether the average time of loading system achieve discharge state.In the case of no equipment operation, the system unloading is caused by leakage.

Leakage (%) = (T x 100) present (T + T), T = load time (minutes), T = unloading time (minutes)

To estimate has more complex control strategy of leak in the system load, please put pressure gauge in volume downstream (V, in cubic feet), including all auxiliary air tank, supervisor and pipeline.Besides leakage, in the case of without using the system, make the system to normal operating pressure (P1, in psig).Select the second pressure (P2, which is about half the P1 value) and to measure the system pressure drop to P2 the time it takes for the unit with the minutes (T,).

Leakage (free air, the unit for l/s) = [(V x (P1, P2) present x 1.25 x 101325 (T)]

1.25 multiplier leakage can be corrected to normal system pressure, thus will consider leakage decreases as the system pressure drops.

Effectively repair and repair leaks can make depend on air significantly reduce the cost.The company not only can be used by repair leaks to save energy, we can improve the level of production, and prolong the service life of equipment.