A pellet plant manufacturer achieved substantial energy savings of ₹ 11 lacs per annum through AIRScan air audit services on its compressor system while reducing its carbon footprint by a significant amount.
Project overview
Compressed air plays a fundamental role in your production process and as the operation is continuous, the supply of high-quality, reliable compressed air is both critical and costly. A careful examination of a facility’s compressed air system will likely reveal several opportunities for reducing the plant’s energy draw, resulting in significant energy savings, lower operating costs and a minimized impact on the environment through a smaller carbon footprint.
As Atlas Copco is committed to sustainability goals, we take a lead to maximize the efficiency of the compressed air room through our AIRScan Air audit services and help industries save money. The scope of our compressed air audit AIRSCAN is to provide an understanding of the current air compressor system with a clear scope of energy-saving opportunities.
In view of this, we have conducted an AIRSCAN air audit on one of the iron oxide pellet production companies.
The customer
The company is one of the largest merchant pellet manufacturers in India with a pellet manufacturing capacity of 4 MTPA supported by a beneficiation capacity of 4.7 MTPA. The sharp focus on the quality of the product has earned many reputed consumers in the domestic and export markets.
Location
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The challenge
The company has huge installations of air compressors and air dryers with a total installed power of around 4400 kW due to its high production capacity. This huge compressed air system makes the energy audit critical for long-term sustainability.
Although the company was doing good with its production, it was missing the energy cost savings targets due to high power consumption and optimization of its compressed air system. The main challenges that they were facing with the compressed air system are:
- Losses due to compressed air leaks
- Air quality issues
- Pressure drop in the compressed air system
- Uneven demand pattern
Assessment and solution
To overcome the company these challenges and make their compressed air system highly efficient, our energy auditors have conducted a comprehensive audit of their compressed air system.
Implementation and outcome
The ultimate goal of this air compressor audit was to find out the opportunities to improve the system's efficiency. With the existing wide compressed air network, it was necessary to work with good planning and timely execution. The team conducted the compressed air audit service by dividing measurement areas into three major sections
- Generation - running pattern of the air compressors, air quality
- Distribution - a pressure drop, piping layout, air receiver
- Demand - air leakages and usage pattern at the point of use
During the complete audit, the approach is to understand the customer's pneumatic process & then provide solutions/recommendations backed by proper calculations and data analysis.
Our team has also done a feasibility study of recommendation along with plant personnel and later, additional measurements were conducted to conclude the validation/scope.
Solutions offered
Potential savings from the AIRscan audit in TOE (Tonne of Oil Equivalent)
The combined effect of these measures has been considerable. The level of energy used on site for generating compressed air at the plant has been reduced and helped the company to achieve energy savings of 14400 kWh/Month with a total saving of ₹ 11 Lacs per annum. This has resulted in an estimated ROI payback of fewer than 04 months.
The compressed air system upgrade has also helped reduce the company’s carbon footprint by around 1223 tonnes of CO2. When combined with the effect of other vital measures the company has taken in using less energy and improving its green credentials right across its business, that figure might increase.
