Top Product: Original GA 90 VSD

In honor of our 140^th anniversary, we asked some of our product managers to tell us about their favorite Atlas Copco product. So far, we’ve featured top product stories on the GA 500 stationary oil-injected rotary air compressor and our energy recovery system. This week’s response comes from Trey Ragsdale, Product Marketing Manager, 30-90kW Oil Injected Screw Compressors for the U.S. Industrial Air Division.

“My favorite Atlas Copco product is the original GA 90 VSD. The GA 90 VSD was the first electric driven, variable-speed rotary screw air compressor on the market. The GA 90 VSD revolutionized the compressor industry because it provided an ideal solution to the problem of efficiently matching the compressor’s output to the system demand across a wide flow range. Previously, the technology used to vary the compressor output was limited to mechanical devices that had poor efficiencies at partial flows and often caused reliability issues due to their mechanical nature.

Energy to produce compressed air can represent 40% of a plant’s total electricity bill and VSD compressors can reduce compressed air energy cost by 35%, meaning that compressed air users can experience huge energy savings while simultaneously maintaining a precise system pressure.”

Trey Ragsdale is the Atlas Copco Product Marketing Manager for the 30-90kW range of Oil Injected Screw compressors. Having worked in service, new product development and sales for many years, Ragsdale is a veteran of the compressed air industry and has been involved in specifying compressed air systems for hundreds of plants across the Carolinas. Ragsdale received his Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from North Carolina State University.