COMPRESSED AIR


AIR COMPRESSOR ENERGY SAVING TECH IS AVAILABLE, BUT IS THE BOTTLING INDUSTRY READY?


By Graham Coats, sales director at CMC I


t’s no secret that one of the largest costs currently facing drinks manufacturers is PET bottle blow moulding; a cost exacerbated by the fact that the compressors used to make them are typically less sophisticated than what the modern day compressor is capable of offering. Of course, there is a reason reciprocating compressors are the most widely used


compressor to provide the 40 Bar of air required to blow bottles. Despite the higher costs associated with maintaining them, they are still the most effective compressor for the job. However, if the drive to improve on the status quo didn’t exist, we’d still be without mobile phones and using trains powered by steam.


And it’s this approach that has led CMC to launch AIRMATICS – a simple cloud-based air compressor monitoring, performance and control solution that


12 O TOBERC 2019 | FA ORY&HANDLINGSOLI


provides real time data, analytics and insights at the push of a button.


The solution, which takes the very best elements of its predecessor, Metacentre, and incorporates Industry 4.0 capabilities to deliver a cloud-based performance and monitoring package, is not only pushing the boundaries of air compressor efficiencies (regardless of the compressor’s age), but also providing a viable way in which to marry yesterday’s air compressor technology with the performance and monitoring technology of tomorrow.


Take Princes Soft Drinks, for example, which was looking to reduce cost across seven of its large air compressors used for PET blow moulding, each of which require 2.275 MWh of power per year. Following a feasibility study, which was carried out in partnership with Maziak Compressor Services,


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it was established that optimising its compressors by reducing the dramatic state change from on to off would deliver huge cost savings.


Having already achieved success with Britvic at its Beckton plant, where a previous generation of AIRMATICS made a net annual saving of 1,797,131 kWh and cut carbon output by 772 tonnes, Princes


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