ET22SWE0045 - Compressed Air End-Use Air Management System

A new energy-saving product called an air management system (AMS) has been developed as a drop-in replacement for compressed air filter-regulator-lubricator (FRL) assemblies. The AMS saves energy by reducing pressure to large pneumatic end-uses during idling and cutting off air supply during extended downtime. This saves energy by eliminating leak loads in complicated machinery that are otherwise unlikely to be addressed. Therefore, the product may be well-suited to production facilities with large, custom pneumatic end-uses that have intermittent usage such as food processing, packaging, paper products, and pharmaceutical industries. The product also has inherent air data collection capabilities that can be integrated into monitoring software or cloud services to improve overall plant management and compressed air system optimization.

The project will independently test the AMS at one or two sites to measure the impacts, cost-effectiveness, user acceptance, and installation feasibility of the product.  Measurement and verification adhering to IPMVP Option D: Calibrated Simulation will be used to calculate energy, demand, cost, GHG, and TSB savings on a per-unit basis. protocols of the compressed air supply equipment and impacted end-uses will provide data for energy, demand, and cost savings analysis. Monitoring will establish a baseline and operating conditions while post-intervention energy usage will be modeled using justified assumptions regarding the control features and programming. Savings will be extrapolated to an estimated statewide potential and other operating conditions. 

The findings will help address market barriers to the product, allow for manufacturer improvements, and determine best use cases. It will also provide valuable data for possible future development of controls products that integrate end-use data into compressor room controls. The product has large potential for utility benefits and programs in both new construction and retrofit applications in the difficult-to-address compressed air market base of the industrial sector. The study will evaluate per-unit savings as well as statewide potential, market conditions, and program recommendations for the encouragement of market adoption.

Compressed air energy systems account for about 10 percent of all manufacturing electrical energy use and almost always have opportunities for improved efficiency. One unaddressed opportunity is control and monitoring of loads at large end-use machinery. These large end-use machines often have internal air leaks, losses, inefficiencies, and unproductive loads whether production is active or not. Remedying these losses is oftentimes prohibited or too costly if the interiors of these machines are difficult to access. 

A new plug-and-play product that can satisfy this need is known as an air management system which augments or replaces common, existing filter-regulator-lubricator assemblies. The new technology includes features that can be commissioned to reduce supply pressure and completely cut off airflow to these machines when they are idle and unproductive. These control features will generate dependable, reliable energy savings by reducing the load on the air compressors. Additionally, monitoring at these end-uses gives facility staff insight into their plant and machine health that would otherwise be unavailable. 

Savings for this technology were calculated on a per-unit basis for both a packaged frozen food host site and across a range of flow and runtime conditions that exist across the market. Across a range of conditions that would be seen in various plants, payback can be well under five years with savings exceeding 3,000 kWh per installed unit, depending on the end-use flowrate and idle time. In machinery with open pipe blowing and large idle flowrates in comparison to the working flow, payback can easily be under one or two years. These results suggest an uncommon and useful opportunity to develop a new workpaper for energy efficiency program portfolios. The emerging technology is broadly applicable across the industrial sector and is well-suited for rebate program support that could benefit both utilities and their customers.