Buying a new car is always an exciting moment. Although you need to be looking at fuel efficiency and hybrid cars, emotionally, we like to have a large engine in the car. A 6-cyl or 8 cylinder will last much longer than a fast running 4 or even 3 cylinder. Trend is however to have faster running 3 cylinder as the weight is lower and the speed of the cars is dramatically going down.
For heavy duty stationary applications and industrial applications, large engines are equiped with 6-8-12 cylinder slow running reciprocating engines. Their reliability, fuel efficiency is higher and the maintenance is lower.
Similar is applied to the Industrial Reciprocating compressors. They are designed for long durability, low maintenance and very high Energy efficiency. Many large manufactures like N&E, Burchardt, Siemens, MAN, GE, AF, B&M, LMF are producing these.
They will be used in the most extreme conditions while maintaining their characteristics.
As Climate change is becoming such a hot topic, should we not consider back the (slow) Industrial Piston for standard air compression and reduce the energy consumption by more than 15%?