ENERGY, cilt.252, sa.1, ss.1-10, 2022 (SCI-Expanded)
The electricity
consumption of compressed air (CA) production and utilisation systems is high, due
to an absence of suitable recovery methods and proper measurements in most
industrial plants. This situation results in high costs of production and
reduced profits. In our study, we therefore investigate the energy-saving
potential of a CA system with the aim of reducing electricity consumption in an
industrial facility. Our study consists of two parts: in the first stage, we
evaluate the applicability of methods such as elimination of leakage in
distribution lines, loaded-unloaded operation of compressors, and the use of waste
heat recovery system methods, both physically and economically, while in the
second, we examine the correlations between leakage airflow rate, noise, and
system pressure in a general CA system and carry out regression analyses, using
the SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) software program, for the
first time. Our results suggest that optimised and improved CA systems are
energy-saving solutions when applied in industrial plants. We demonstrate that
there are strong correlations between the system pressure, air leakage
diameter, noise, and annual leakage cost in industrial CA systems. The
relationships between these variables can be expressed as a power model (Y=β×Xn).