The high cost of wasted air
The New Zealand government, as part of its Target Sustainability project, estimates that system leaks can account for 30 to 50 % of a compressed air system’s capacity. Quick detection of compressed air, gas and vacuum leaks is a single factor in finding hidden profits. Air leaks can also lead to capital expenses, rework, downtime or quality issues and increased maintenance costs.
To make up the pressure loss due to leaks, operators often overcompensate by buying a larger compressor than is needed, which requires significant capital costs along with increasing energy costs. System leaks can also cause air dependent equipment to fail due to low system pressure. That can lead to production delays, unplanned downtime, quality issues, decreased service life, and increased maintenance due to unnecessary cycling of compressors.
The maintenance manager of one United States manufacturer, for instance, says low pressure in one of their air torqueing tools can potentially lead to product defects. “Mis-torqued units, either under torqued or over torqued, can lead to recalls. That also leads to more man hours put into something that should have been a very standard process,” he says. “It’s money out the door in lost profits and lost units. In the worst-case scenario we also wind up with lost demand because we weren't able to deliver.”
It’s no wonder that utilities, industry, and government all target compressed air systems as a potential source of cost savings. Leaks lead to waste. Correcting those leaks can save the operator money and prevent the utility from having to build additional capacity into their system.
Finding and fixing leaks isn’t easy
Many plants and facilities do not have a leak detection program. Finding and fixing leaks isn’t easy. Quantifying the amount of waste and determining the cost, requires energy specialists or consultants who use energy analyzers and loggers to audit your air systems. By systematically calculating the annual cost savings of eliminating the leaks, they can make a strong business case for proceeding on such a project.
Energy audits of compressed air systems are often conducted through partnerships with industry, government, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). One such partnership, the Compressed Air Challenge (CAC) is a voluntary collaboration of those types of groups. Its single goal is to provide product-neutral information and educational materials to help industries generate and use compressed air at maximum sustainable efficiency.
Why ultrasonic leak detection is inefficient
Mainstream leak detection practices are, unfortunately quite primitive. An age-old method is to listen for hissing sounds, which are virtually impossible to hear in many environments and to spray soapy water on the area of the suspected leak, which is messy and can create a possible slipping hazard.
The current go-to tool for finding compressor leaks is an ultrasonic acoustic detector–a portable electronic device that recognizes high frequency sounds associated with air leaks. Typical ultrasonic detectors help find leaks but they’re time consuming to use and repair crews can generally only use them during planned downtime, when maintaining other critical machines might be a better use of their time. These units also require the operator to be located close to the equipment to find leaks, which makes it difficult to use in hard-to-reach areas such as ceilings or behind other equipment.
In addition to the time it takes to find leaks using either soapy water or ultrasonic detectors, there can be safety issues with finding leaks overhead or under equipment using these techniques. Climbing ladders or crawling around equipment can pose dangers.
Compressed air leak detection game changer
What if there were a leak detection technology that could pinpoint the precise location of a leak from up to 50 meters away, in a noisy environment, without shutting down equipment? Fluke has developed an industrial imager that does just that. Industrial maintenance managers are calling the Fluke ii900 Sonic Industrial Imager, a “gamechanger” in the pursuit of finding compressed air leaks.
This new sonic industrial imager—which can detect a broader range of frequencies than traditional ultrasonic devices–uses new SoundSight™ technology to deliver enhanced visual scans of air leaks, similar to the way infrared cameras detect hotspots.