On the Air: How Smart Pneumatics Saves Costs and Helps the Planet

By Robert Brezni, Global Account Manager, Fluid Control & Pneumatics, Emerson

At a time when the need to decarbonize economies is at its greatest, manufacturers are better positioned than ever to take meaningful action. The digital transformation of industrial facilities makes it possible for manufacturers of every size to access real-time process data, insights, and diagnostics that can help improve energy efficiency and sustainability across the plant floor. The key is integrating smart technologies and using the data they collect to make decisions that reduce energy use and related emissions.

Many smart technologies are scalable, so facilities can focus their attention in one area and expand from there. For example, compressed air systems are responsible for about 10% of a typical industrial facility’s electricity use, which makes them significant opportunities for savings. By integrating smart pneumatic technologies, operators can collect system data, including airflow, pressure, and temperature, to identify whether and where they are wasting compressed air. With this data, operators determine corrective actions.

Wasted energy in pneumatic systems can be staggering. To put a number on it, manufacturing plants typically lose about 30% of compressed air due to leakage alone. This wasted energy leads to machine downtime and, of course, increased energy costs.

Compressed air helps operate machinery and processes throughout industrial facilities, so its prevalence makes it pivotal to lower year-over-year energy costs. In fact, improvements in the airflow of a plant’s machinery of even just a few percentage points can mean tens of thousands of dollars in saved energy costs each month, depending on the size and nature of the equipment. That translates to hundreds of thousands of pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions saved. With smart pneumatics like software monitoring and notification solutions to detect leakage, manufacturers often reduce their compressed air energy spending 10% to 20% and reduce their CO2 footprint by 10%.

However, for many manufacturers, this transformation remains a goal rather than a reality. While they may acknowledge the benefits, over 70% of manufacturers lack a data analytics plan and a clear blueprint for success. These companies consider the Industrial Internet of Things and other enabling technologies too complex, costly, and time consuming to implement.

But that doesn’t have to be the case. Manufacturers can invest in plug-and-play smart pneumatic solutions that keep installation time and costs to a minimum. They can take the first step toward digital transformation with a closer look at how smart pneumatics saves energy in areas where leaks and losses occur.

Plants improve compressed energy savings through digital transformation in two primary ways: addressing leaks and leveraging the ratio between air pressure and airflow.

Addressing leaks

The most obvious way manufacturing plants lose energy in pneumatic systems is through leakage. When pneumatic system components are subject to wear, leakage can occur and grow over time. The larger the leak, the more significant the energy loss, resulting in wasted energy, a bigger carbon footprint, and higher operating costs. Some operators lose more than $50,000 a year per machine!

In addition to energy loss, a compressed air leak causes a machine’s system pressure to fluctuate, affecting equipment efficiency and even production. As a result, a machine must work harder to compensate. This unnecessary cycling and increased run time raises energy costs, decreases equipment service life, and increases maintenance.

To detect and locate compressed air leaks, companies bring in technicians with ultrasonic equipment to test for them. But leaks often appear, persist, and grow between those periodic, stopgap visits.

On the other hand, smart pneumatics continuously monitors airflow. Some sensors collect and provide real-time insights on flow while also capturing pressure and temperature data in the feed line, enabling advanced diagnoses of the operating parameters. These solutions often easily retrofit to existing machines with the use of edge gateways. Around-the-clock software monitoring detects leaks in near-real time. The software identifies the machine in question and sends notification alerts directly to maintenance staff to investigate further.

Addressing compressed air leaks early also reduces both unplanned and planned (to test for leaks on each machine) downtime, and it improves overall equipment efficiency.

Air pressure and airflow

Some manufacturers may not have the full picture when it comes to the relationship between air pressure and airflow. This means they don’t know the optimal consumption point of compressed air for their manufacturing process. The air pressure in their industrial machines may be higher than it needs to be. When equipment consumes more compressed air than necessary, it consumes more energy, which raises energy costs and CO2 emissions.

Smart sensors and an edge computing device collect data about air pressure and airflow. By analyzing the edge analytics of the pneumatic system, plants gain a clearer picture of the relationship between air pressure and flow. By lowering the overall pressure of their pneumatic system, they reduce airflow to a certain point while maintaining the same cylinder cycle time.

Finding the optimal ratio between pressure and flow reduces compressed air consumption, energy costs, and CO2 emissions without affecting production.

Manufacturers understand that sustainability is not just a trend. It’s their responsibility to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions however they can. Monitoring compressed air in pneumatic systems is one place to start. When companies monitor and record machine performance, they can be confident they are using energy as it’s intended, and they are stopping losses before they can grow.

The flexibility offered by today’s smart pneumatic devices makes it possible for manufacturers to tailor their digital transformation in ways that work for them. Partnering with an automation expert with a proven history in smart pneumatics and fluid power applications can help a company of any size recognize its specific circumstances, set sustainability goals, and identify solutions. With the right solutions in place, manufacturers can take meaningful action to make meaningful change.•

• fluid power
• pneumatics
• smart pneumatics