Complete Guide: Safety in Your Compressor Room

The vast majority of factories have a neuralgia, that is, a malfunction in their "nervous system", of which they almost never have any idea about: the compressor room, a fundamental space that houses most of the compressed air system.

To ensure the safety of employees and the preservation of equipment, this area must be thought out down to the smallest detail. Issues such as noise and vibration reduction, optimal system performance, energy efficiency and CO₂ reduction, as well as the prospect of future expansions, must be taken into account. Below, we have listed all the requirements needed to make it possible – check them out!

1. How to choose the location of the installation?
2. Compressor design and positioning
3. Compressor air inlet
4. Ventilation in the compressor room
5. Compressor electrical installation
6. Conclusion

It is necessary to try to install the compressor room in a central and roofed place.

The first rule of successfully structuring our compressor room is to organize a separate central space, preferably indoors. This provides us with certain advantages, such as:

1. greater operating economy.
2. a better designed compressed air system.
3. ease of use and maintenance.
4. Protection against unauthorized access.
5. Adequate noise control.
6. Easier possibilities for controlled ventilation.

But like any rule, there are exceptions. Contact us to find out if your application requires a decentralized installation.

If we do not have space to install our compressor room indoors, we can install it outdoors under a roof. In this case, however, we must take into account certain risks and drawbacks, for example:

1. If the room is not well insulated, the noise of the compressor and any ventilation equipment could disturb the environment.
2. If the room temperature is too high, there is a risk of overheating spikes and other damage to the equipment.
3. We must ensure that we have an adequate condensate drainage system in place.
4. Dangerous environments with hazardous substances can cause accidents.
5. Excessive dust or other contaminants in atmospheric air can compromise compressed air quality and require additional treatment accessories.
6. It is important to consider the space available to allow for future expansions.
7. Lack of accessibility may increase maintenance costs.
8. In cold areas, freezing in condensation pockets and discharges may jeopardize the safety of the system.
9. Protection against rain and frost  will also be necessary in colder regions, which may have low temperatures for the air inlet opening.
10. There will be greater difficulty in recovering the thermal energy dissipated by the compressor for other activities
11. The ease of unauthorized access increases the risk of sabotage of the system, whether intentional or unintentional.

In large installations requiring long pipes, the compressed air center must be installed in such a way as to facilitate the layout of the distribution system. Any mistake in this regard can result in low productivity and sub-ideal performance, as well as high energy bills, which increases CO₂ emissions.

In addition to being centralized, the room must have dimensions that allow the handling of the components and the structure necessary to support the heaviest equipment. 

The building chosen must have lifting equipment sized to support the heaviest components of the compressor installation (usually the electric motor) and/or allow access by a forklift. In addition, the ceiling height must be sufficient to be able to lift an electric motor or something similar if necessary.

As the ideal of every company is growth, your compressor room should be designed to provide sufficient space for the installation of additional equipment in the event of future expansion and production growth.

The compressed air installation must have a drain on the floor, or other facilities to treat condensation from the compressor, the aftercooler, the air tank, the dryers, etc. And their placement must comply with the municipal legislation in force at the place of installation.

Normally, to install a compressor, you only need a flat floor with sufficient load-bearing capacity. In most cases, the installation is provided with anti-vibration elements. In new installations, the installation of a plinth for each set of compressors is usually guaranteed in order to allow the floor to be cleaned.

In contrast, very large piston and centrifugal compressors may require a concrete slab foundation, anchored in rock or on a solid ground foundation.

In advanced and complete compressor plants, the impact of externally produced vibrations can be reduced to a minimum. In systems with centrifugal compressors, however, it may be necessary to include a damping system in the foundation of the room.

Compressor maintenance can be made easier by installing the compressed air center near ancillary equipment such as pumps and fans. In some cases, a location close to the boiler room can also be advantageous.

A well-located and sized compressor room can be decisive for air flow meters to facilitate internal flow and the economic allocation of compressed air use within the company.

The compressor air inlet is usually located in an opening in the soundproofing compartment, but it can also be placed elsewhere where the air is as clean as possible, but further away.

Wear-causing dirt particles and corrosive gases can be particularly harmful. A pre-filter (cyclone, panel, or rotary belt filter) should be used in installations where the surrounding air has a high concentration of dust. In this case, it can generate a higher pressure drop and extra energy consumption, which can end up unnecessarily increasing our carbon footprint.

It is also advantageous for the incoming air to be cold. Therefore, it may be convenient to direct this air through a separate pipe from the outside of the building to the compressor.

It's important that the piping in your compressed air system is corrosion-resistant, has a grille at the inlet, and is designed so that there is no risk of rain splashing onto the compressor. It is also necessary to use piping with a sufficiently large diameter so that the pressure drop is as low as possible.

The design of the inlet piping in piston compressors is especially critical. The resonance of the pipes, due to the standing sound waves caused by the cyclic pulsation frequency of the compressor, can damage the pipes and compressor, cause vibrations and affect the environment due to the annoying low-frequency noise.

The amount of ventilation air required will be determined by the size of the compressor and the cooling method (air or water). In either case, heat must be removed to maintain the temperature of the compressor room at an acceptable level.

Heat is an unavoidable byproduct of air compression, and can be reused with an energy recovery unit. Allow yourself to reuse up to 90% of the compressor's heat, generating savings, competitiveness and sustainability thanks to the reduction of CO₂ emissions.

Atlas Copco offers Energy Recovery: use your energy twice. With this function, the thermal energy generated in the compression process can be put to different uses so that it is not wasted. Atlas Copco also offers you an energy meter (optional equipment), which monitors the amount of energy saved. Learn more about this!

A water-cooled compressor installation places very little on the compressor room ventilation system. This is because cooling water contains, in the form of heat, approximately 90% of the energy absorbed by the electric motor.

Water cooling systems for compressors can be based on one of three principles:

1. Open systems without water circulation (connected to an external water supply).
2. Open systems with water circulation (cooling tower).
3. Closed systems with water circulation (including an external radiator/heat exchanger).

Most modern compressor units are also available in an air-cooled version, in which the forced ventilation inside the compressor unit contains around 100% of the energy consumed by the electric motor.

However, cooling places more demands on the compressor room ventilation system.

An oversized motor is more expensive, requires unnecessarily high starting current, needs larger fuses, has a low power factor, and offers slightly lower performance.

On the other hand, a motor that is too small for the installation in which it is used quickly overloads and is therefore at risk of breaking down.

Normally, there is no separate control voltage connected to the compressor, as most compressors are equipped with an integrated control transformer. The primary side of the transformer is connected to the compressor power supply to provide more reliable operation.

If there are problems with the power supply, the compressor will stop immediately and be prevented from restarting. This function, with an internally supplied control voltage, should be used in situations where the starting device is located at a certain distance from the compressor.

The short-circuit protection, which is placed at one of the start points of the wires, may contain fuses or a circuit breaker and be properly adapted to the system to provide the appropriate level of protection.

Both methods have advantages and disadvantages:

• Fuses are well known and work better than a circuit breaker for large short-circuit currents, but they do not create a total interruption of insulation and have long trip times for small fault currents.
• A circuit breaker creates a fast, fully isolated outage, even for small fault currents, but requires more work during the planning phase compared to fuses.

The sizing of the short-circuit protection is based on the expected load, but also on the limitations of the starter unit.

They must be sized so that, during normal operation, they are not subjected to excessive temperatures and are not thermally or mechanically damaged by an electrical short circuit.

Cable sizing and selection are based on load, allowable voltage drop, laying method (on a rack, on the wall, etc.), and ambient temperature.

The electric motor not only consumes active power, which can be converted into mechanical work, but also reactive power, which is necessary to magnetize the motor.

Reactive power charges the cables and transformer. The ratio between active and reactive power is determined by the power factor, cos φ. This factor is usually between 0.7 and 0.9, with the lowest value being that of small engines.

The power factor can be increased to almost 1 by generating the reactive power directly in the machine by means of a capacitor. This reduces the need to draw reactive power from the grid. The reason for phase compensation is that the power provider may charge for reactive power consumption above a predetermined level, and heavily loaded cables and transformers need to be discharged.

In summary, we can say that safety in the compressor room depends on careful observation of the requirements and demands of each piece of equipment and on a suitable environment that allows the operation, maintenance and future expansion of the system.

All this, of course, without losing sight of lower energy consumption and CO₂ emissions for more sustainable operation.