Compressed air in a factory can serve two applications. Either it is for a specific application or either it is for the general purpose throughout the whole factory (7-10 bar network). The specific applications often are using different pressure for which they cannot be connected to the general compressed air network at 7-10 bar.

 In the general purpose, the compressed air is considered as the 4th utility, after electricity, gas and water. Almost every larger factory has a compressed air network. To the network many consumers are connected. Depending on the size, there can be a large amount of consumers, which will consume an amount of compressed air during a specific time frame.

 Depending on the manufacturing process and during Coffee brakes, lunch brakes, weekends,… the demand will fluctuate.

 Typically, there will be a minimum demand, an average demand and a maximum demand.

 Most factory managers also wants to have redundancy in the capacity of the compressor room. 

 The required flow, will be the maximum flow plus the redundancy. So the required installed capacity can easily be 150%, while the maximum required is 100% and the avg is only 50% of max. This means that the whole installation is running on avg. at 33% of its installed capacity.

 When selecting only one compressor, the compressor will run most of the time at partial load which is very unfavorable from energetic point of view and reliability of the compressor.

 Splitting the flow over 2 or 3 compressors is a much better solution. The air-compressors can be managed by a compressor room control system. One of the compressor will be in standby, allowing doing maintenance, one might run continously while the third can modulate to adapt to the required flow.

How many compressors are running full load at your facility ?