Technology

Nutriom sets the bar high when it comes to producing its premium quality natural powdered egg products Ova Easy® and Egg Crystals®, that are sold at outdoor retailers such as REI, and online merchants such as Amazon.com; so, when the screw conveyor in their FSIS USDA facility required regular unexpected attention, Leonardo Etcheto, Plant Manager at the Lacey, WA facility knew it was time to look for a better solution.

This food & beverage plant is a large (500,000 sq ft) meat processing plant with twenty packaging lines and nine palletizers. The compressed air system is supplied from three separate rooms with seven individual lubricant-cooled, single and two-stage rotary screw compressors. The plant has four blower purge desiccant dryers designed to deliver a - 40°F pressure dewpoint.

This was a complete supply and demand-side system assessment. The supply-side audit involved shutting off old air compressors and purchasing newer more efficient air compressors and dryers. The demand-side audit involved finding ways to improve the piping and reduce compressed air consumption.

Annual plant electric costs for compressed air production, as operating today, are \$3,050,625 per year. If the electric costs of \$27,811 associated with operating ancillary equipment such as dryers are included the total electric costs for operating the air system are \$3,078,436 per year.

With sustainability and energy-efficiency targets tougher than ever, magnetic bearings are drawing the attention of engineers in many industries, offering a whole range of advantages from increased performance to extended lifespan.

Recently the capacity of the Las Palmas, California, waste water treatment operations were expanded by combining two plants and making one centralized filtration center. The new center expanded the flow capacity from 162,000 Gallons per Day (GPD) combined to 288,000 GPD when the manually controlled reclaimed water operations were updated to a state-of-the-art automated system. Reclaimed water from the plant irrigates local community green spaces. The new automated system ensures lower labor costs, consistent quality, and peak efficiency in the process of reclaiming waste water for irrigation.

In the absence of official third party specifications on energy efficiency, it is difficult to evaluate and compare blower technologies fairly and effectively. The lack of readily available evaluation tools leads to misinformation and unfair comparisons between technologies. Further, the performance verification process is difficult to prove.

The plant air system consists of eight, single-stage, lubricated, Sullair rotary screw compressors. All units are in good working order.  Units 2, 3, 4 and 7 are water-cooled and units 6, 8, 9, 10 and 11 are air-cooled. The main plant air system has two primary compressed air dryers, a Thompson Gordon model TG 2000 refrigerated dryer, and a Sullair model SAR 1350 heatless desiccant dryer.  Both units are working according to their design. The TG 2000 uses approximately 11.2 kW and is a non-cycling type unit, and the SAR 1350 uses approximately 200 cfm of purge air to regenerate the wet tower. 

Triethylene glycol (TEG) dehydrators are the most prevalent technology for removing water vapor from natural gas . Molecular sieve dryers are also quite common in gas processing plants. Molecular sieve units have operating processes similar to industrial heat-regenerated compressed air dryers. Natural gas, however, often needs to be purified at the wellhead before reaching the processing plant. Deliquescent dehydrators are normally used, in remote locations where no power supply exists, to dry small gas volumes located between the wellhead and these main treatment plants. The most common applications are instrument gas, fuel gas, sales gas, and emissions mitigation.

Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) is an alternative fuel source (to diesel and gasoline) with far-reaching benefits to North America. Strategically important benefits include energy independence, improved air quality, job creation, and lower and more stable fuel prices. This paper discusses natural gas desiccant dryer requirements in Natural Gas Vehicle (NGV) refueling stations, compares deliquescent to desiccant dryers and reviews two on-site field gas upgrading examples in displacing diesel fuel.

When a submarine docks for maintenance, the Navy requires a high-pressure, dockside, pier-power air compressor ready to be used in an explosion-proof environment. We have technicians working on military ships and submarines worldwide. For this, both UAPC and some of our technicians have been prequalified and have different secrecy clearances depending upon the project. In addition to our rental air compressors, we also have a fleet of CNG compressors available for long-term rent for the CNG refueling market.