COMPRESSORS PETplanet Insider Vol. 25 No. 09/24 www.petpla.net 30 Improving compressed air efficiency in PET applications by Ruari McCallion The Water Compressor is a step forward in compressed air systems, according to Augwind, its developer. With a successful R&D project demonstrating its effectiveness, it is now seeking partners to help demonstrate and develop to the next stage. “His original idea was to place an underground tank beneath each wind tower. Excess energy generated by the turbine would compress air within the tank and the network of wind turbine-fed tanks would become a distributed energy storage asset,” said Ido Ben-Yehuda, Head of Marketing with Augwind. “The solution has evolved, dramatically, since then.” Augwind, headquartered in Yakum, Israel, was established in 2012, to develop and exploit Dr Yogev’s idea and to realise the AirBattery energy storage system - a novel combination of pumped-hydro and compressed air energy storage. After accomplishing the development of its proprietary underground tanks, that are used for the compression and expansion process of the AirBattery, Augwind realised that this element has already commercial value for industrial compressed air applications - buffering between compressed air generation and consumption, optimising the energy bill and productivity of large compressed air systems. This underground tank was commercialised under the name AirSmart. Today, over 70 AirSmart installations are operating on daily basis at some of the largest industries in Israel and recently in Italy. AirSmart clients include companies operating on the mineral mining and processing industries, food and beverage, plastics, cement, steel and more. Among Augwind’s customers are companies such as Unilever, Iscar (an IMC Group company) and Tempo, the Israeli producer of Heineken and PepsiCo. Raising the game with underground storage AirSmart is essentially a compressed air buffer system. Instead of supplying directly, the air is accumulated in underground tanks located between the compressor room and the machinery. This allows supply to be optimised. That idea of buffer storage is not new, of itself, but the installation, charging technology and management all are. Compressed air buffering systems traditionally take up a lot of space; what Augwind achieved was the development of technologies that enable the large CE-certified tanks to be installed underground – under car parks, logistics or other areas, which means that valuable working spaces can be kept in productive activity, while enabling huge, compressed air reservoirs. The system offers energy cost savings of more than 20% of compressor’s electricity consumption, according to Ido and Augwind. To realise the AirBattery system, one of the challenges that had to be overcome was keeping the air cool that was undergoing compression. Augwind has achieved it by using water as both the compressing agent and as a cooling medium – and the location of the tanks underground also helps to maintain a constant temperature. Setup example of a compressor, production machinery and an underground AirSmart buffer chamber COMPRESSORS Augwind’s Water Compressor system takes a different approach to compressed air from conventional solutions. It is an evolution of Augwind’s AirBattery, an energy storage technology developed by Dr Or Yogev around 15 years ago, while he was in California. The ‘Golden State’ had a wide range of energy resources, including oil and, more recently, wind and solar power. Dr Yogev was working at the time with a solar power company and he recognised the need for some kind of storage system to manage renewables, to harvest wind energy when wind was blowing but demand was low – such as at night – and, similarly, to release energy back into the grid during periods of higher demand. The conventional thought had been to create big batteries that harness the energy in the form of compressed air; Dr Yogev took a step to the side and thought of something different.
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