PETpla.net Insider 05 / 2019

COMPRESSORS PET planet Insider Vol. 20 No. 05/19 www.petpla.net 35 Ingersoll Rand has identified additional energy savings opportuni- ties through the implementation of ‘system level controls’. This is an important component of any system including multiple high pressure air compressors. Unmanaged systems are inherently inefficient as air com- pressors operate independently and often ‘against’ one another. System level controls provide intelligent load sharing in multi-compressor environ- ments including systems featuring machines of different sizes, com- pression technologies, and control methodologies. By utilising system level controls, customers can opti- mise the efficiency of the ‘supply side’ (compressed air equipment) of the system to match the ‘demand side’ (blow moulding operations) load profile. Energy savings within a typical high-pressure compressed air system can easily exceed 10 % when system level controls are implemented. Rugged reliability With customers focused on increased uptime availability and with fewer systems designed to include installed redundancy, reli- ability by design has become para- mount. The conservative design of the PET*Star technology delivers reliability, as Ingersoll Rand states. Design features that illustrate the conservative design approach include the following:  Low air compressor operating speeds (RPM) - results in reduced wear of piston rings, rider bands, and packing materials as well as fewer open/close cycles on compressor suction and discharge valves.  Rugged frame and running gear co-developed with Dresser Indus- tries – design includes a unique single piece 4-Throw crankshaft as part of an ‘H’ cylinder arrangement configuration, an additional out- board bearing to bolster crankshaft support, and an auxiliary oil pump to ensure continuous running gear lubrication.  Premium suction and discharge valve technologies – carefully selected valve designs inclusive of PEEK composite materials to ensure extended run life (24,000 hours of operation) between required rebuilds.  Conservative drive motor configu- ration – slow speed (1,200RPM) duty rated motor selection ensures peak horsepower requirement is below nameplate rating and that motor never operates in the service factor. All motors feature TEFC enclosures. Comprehensive service plans In order to achieve maximum compressor availability and minimise downtime (scheduled and unplanned), customers are increasingly interested in comprehensive service plans to complement the compressor design reliability. This has become even more important as customers today are less likely to have in-house maintenance resources that are capable and/or comfortable working on high-pressure compressed air systems. In response to this need, Ingersoll Rand developed their PackageCare program to provide proactive service intervention and leverage predictive and analytical tools to help prevent unexpected interruptions. Package- Care delivers cost certainty and risk transfer while driving maximum asset availability. Remote monitoring Ingersoll Rand anticipates that the trend toward asset availability will result in customer expectations for uptime availability guarantees. To that end, the company is develop- ing and implementing remote moni- toring functionality on the PET*Star that facilitates real-time asset health assessment and predictive analyt- ics to support rapid troubleshooting and to determine appropriate service interventions. As the remote monitor- ing program evolves, they expect to acquire machine learnings that enable them to understand the correlation of particular data to potential failures better and to improve the predictive service execution so that strenuous uptime availability expectations can be met. www.ingersollrand.com