Terram saves £1,000,000
May 19th 2008 Industrial Air Power is the authorised distributor for Ingersoll Rand Industrial Technologies products throughout Wales and the South West of England. Industrial Air Power and Ingersoll Rand have made a dramatic shift from being a supplier of equipment to a provider of solutions. Our policy is to adopt an audit first strategy. We are fully conversant with all aspects of air generation and equipped to carry our energy audits on any installed system, regardless of size or manufacturer.
A full system audit would include leak detection, measurement of energy consumption, flow measurement including pressure, temperature and final air quality.
As utility rates continue to climb and companies continue to intensify their dedication to green initiatives, energy consumption has become a growing concern for manufacturers. One of the largest energy users within a plant is the compressed air system. Energy recovery provides a cost-effective way for manufacturers to reduce their energy bills while simultaneously benefiting the environment by capturing the thermal energy created through the compression process and putting it to work. Where the heat produced from a compressor can be fully utilized, simple payback periods of less than two years are frequently achieved as you can see below from the Terram ltd case study.
Having already worked with Carbon Trust on a variety of projects, Terram called on their expertise along with Industrial Air Power when faced with rising energy costs. The specialist manufacturer of geo-synthetic materials worked with Industrial Air Power to eliminate energy inefficiencies and re-design and install a new air compressor system. The result was an industry best in terms of energy usage and savings of £202,000 per annum.
Energy savings of approximately 11.25 million kWh over 5-years
Cost savings of approximately £1 Million in 5-years
Emission savings of 7390 tonnes CO2 in the same period
Payback of approximately 24 months
Terram is a company dedicated to the supply of geosynthetic materials to the worldwide construction and civil engineering industries, employing 95 staff at the manufacturing plant near Pontypool in South Wales. The production plant operates 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year.
“The savings we are seeing now are unbelievable but just as important we are reducing our carbon emissions and therefore benefiting the environment,” comments David Roberts, control engineer at Terram.
Although Terram had already started to investigate the costs for new compressed air systems, they hadn’t looked at where, when, how much air was being used. Carbon Trust helped them identify this and used Industrial Air Power to design a system to meet their needs – thus reducing the likelihood of wastage.
Having a tailor made system installed in turn allowed Terram to capitalise on secondary savings such as heat recovery and compressed air leak reduction.
Ongoing monitoring of the fully automated system allows the savings to be quantified. Monitoring also ensures that the focus on savings is maintained and remains a high priority for Terram.
The new compressor system was located into the steam boiler house. This enabled Terram to capitalise on an opportunity to recover the waste heat generated by the compressors and use this to raise the temperature of the water in the hot well, which feeds the boiler. Increased water temperature in turn reduces the amount of gas needed to generate steam.
The aggregated savings from the installation of the new system and implementation of the measures identified represented an 11.8% reduction in the site electrical energy consumption and overall a 38.7% reduction in the electrical energy consumption directly associated with the generation of the compressed air.
An annual CO2 saving of 1,214 tonnes has been achieved plus an additional 264 tonnes from a reduction in gas usage due to the heat recovery process.
The newly installed compressors provided the opportunity to pre-heat the water within the boiler hot well by recovering the heat emitted from the compressors. Using the water cooling circuit and a heat exchanger they have 30 million litres per month at 90°C.
From monitoring the system, it was calculated that Terram was using on average approximately 85m3/min of compressed air with an efficiency of 8kW/m/min, which equated to 7.2 million kWh per annum. By installing a new compressor set supplied by Industrial Air Power, it was calculated that the efficiency could be improved to 6kW/m3/min. Post installation monitoring has proved that the new machinery provides an average efficiency of 5.8kW/m3/min – delivering significant savings. The gas savings are on top of this.
The benefits to Terram were fourfold: a significant reduction in energy costs, the ability to protect plant integrity, reduced maintenance cost and the added benefit of reduced gas consumption from the increased water temperature in the steam boiler hot well.
Installing new Ingersoll Rand two stage fixed speed compressors along with a Nirvana two stage trim compressor, fully automated via a control system provided Terram with primary energy savings. Secondary savings came as a result of the heat recovery process, lower maintenance costs and the leak reduction programme.
The exercise has been successful in achieving reductions of CO2 emissions and the overall costs of supplying the service of compressed air to the business.
The Carbon Trust Wales consultant worked together with Industrial Air Power and Terram engineers providing impartial, independent advice enabling the company to make an informed decision and deliver value for money. The Carbon Trust independently validated the energy savings and confirmed that they exceeded Industrial Air Power’s initial projections.
Through our experience in carrying out hundreds of compressed air audits we have identified the majority of existing compressed air systems include one or more of these deadly sins. This will have and adverse affect on your reliability, productivity and energy consumption.
System over pressurisation resulting in increased artificial demand
Excessive waste through air leakage
False loading of compressors due to lack of system automation and system volume
Inefficiency caused by cycling fixed output compressors
Excessive pressure drop
If you would like advice or help on calculating your saving potential and increasing your company’s profitability and global competitiveness contact Industrial Air Power. More articles from Ingersoll Rand Industrial Technologies: | 
