Our good friend Blaise Pascal – French guy, writer, good at math – messed around a lot with a barometer, and as a result, got his very own system of measurement named after him. A Pascal, of course, is a measure of pressure (atmospheric pressure, not the burdens that come with a looming project or a rapidly approaching deadline).
Folks in the compressed air business, or anyone who’s ever owned a bicycle with suspect tires, are all too familiar with the more common PSI – pounds per square inch (one PSI is equal to about 6894.757 pascals, in the event this comes up in your next Trivial Pursuit game). Regardless, pressure at any level is still pressure. And it’s probably costing you more than it should.
Yesterday we talked about a municipal wastewater treatment facility on Long Island that, in a head-to-head comparison, determined which low pressure blower was the most efficient and, as a result, the most cost effective (you get one guess which brand they selected). Besides this being another opportunity to tout our energy efficiency compressors and low-pressure blowers, the point here is that plant managers should be vigilant for ways to reduce compressed air costs, regardless of what your applications demand and the equipment you use to get there.
Low pressure is still pressure, and there are likely a number of ways that you can reduce energy costs at your facility – looking at existing equipment and calculating how a capital purchase can quickly realize a return on investment through lower energy costs, determining improper uses, or both.
