Downtime is the devil. For most manufacturers keeping an operation up and running, efficiently and productively is what keeps them up at night. Considered the fourth utility for its ubiquitous role, keeping compressed air flowing is of vital importance to the health of an overall operation. A step beyond proper maintenance is predictive maintenance. Knowing the health of the compressor throughout its life span – before an issue arises, will result in smooth operations.

With summer here, most of us only want to think about sunny days, beaches, barbecues, and baseball games. One thing to avoid ‘playing games’ with is your industrial air compressor maintenance.

It is important to maintain your air compressor year-round, but especially when summer is on the horizon. Hot and humid temperatures can make the air compressor exert more effort, which is why users want to make sure their compressor is in tip-top shape to withstand the summer heat.

Keeping up with preventative maintenance is a critical part of sustaining an air compressor’s efficiency and lifespan. By ensuring that everything works properly, potential issues can be identified before they cause serious and expensive problems. A properly maintained compressed air system can provide energy cost savings, decreased equipment downtime, and improved safety and durability.

Lubrication is a crucial element in the efficiency and life-expectancy of any piece of equipment with moving parts. Lubricants have many functions, but their main purpose is to form a protective barrier between the metal surfaces of critical machine components. Overtime, the lubricant in the machine breaks down to where it can no longer protect the machine. At this point, the lubricant must be changed, and the machine must be filled with a fresh batch of lubricant. This period of time is often referred to as the drain interval.

Optimizing the lubricant’s drain interval is not an easy task without the proper tools and knowledge. The safest – and most accurate - way to monitor and analyze the lubricant’s drain interval is by oil sampling. Oil sampling is analogous to a person going to the doctor and getting bloodwork completed. It is a snapshot of the oil’s health in the machine at that moment. Done routinely, oil sampling is one of the best predictive maintenance tools a service manager can use to keep the compressor running reliably and efficiently. To some, oil sampling may seem like a complicated process. With any luck, this article provides some helpful insights into the oil sampling process from filling the sample bottle to what to look for on the sample report.

Ensuring the smooth operation of your compressed air system depends on more than a quality product and regular maintenance – you also need to safeguard your investment with a manufacturer’s product warranty. The warranty is both a promise from the original equipment manufacturer’s (OEM’s) as well as a testament to the OEM’s confidence in the compressor’s quality. The warranty can provide added reliability (when warranty conditions are maintained) and peace of mind in knowing your investment is protected against unforeseen issues.

Knowing how a desiccant compressed air dryer works can help you decide if it’s the right type of dryer for your compressed air application. But before we talk about how a desiccant dryer dries air, it’s helpful to take a step back and understand why your compressed air system needs dry air at all.

Air compressors are critical to many operations and applications, so much so they are used in 70% of manufacturing in the United States. A wide variety of industries utilize compressed air, from oil and gas companies that use air to propel gas through pipelines; agricultural equipment such as sprayers and crop conveyors are powered by air compressors; pharmaceutical and food and beverage production companies use oil-free compressed air to help reduce contamination in packaging, and more.

Different uses of compressed air require the air stream to have different dimensions.[1] The most critical of these dimensions are air pressure, air flow and air quality. While all compressor types follow the same basic air compression process, some steps in that process differ for each type. Those differences can limit the practical values for some of the dimensions of the air stream they create, so the type of compressor you need depends to some degree on the use you’re putting your compressed air to.

hat’s the best compressor for your operation?

If you’re like many, you may respond to that question with the size of your compressor – a 100 horsepower unit! Or perhaps with the compressor type: rotary screw, piston or maybe even centrifugal. And some may answer based upon the air quality needed, such as oil free. If you’re in construction you may say a 185, or a 1600 or a high-pressure unit.

And while all these answers are correct, we often forget the most important way to describe the best compressor for your operation.

A working compressor.

Some of the most enduring images of the COVID-19 pandemic will be the photos of empty supermarket shelves, plastered across social media, as lockdown anxiety took hold. Fear became tangible through those images, giving us a stark reminder that the things we take for granted can be taken away in an instant.

Those scenes were particularly powerful to those in the commercial food and beverage manufacturing industry. Not only for the unprecedented demand that required a quick response, but as a red flag to operations managers. The margins of error have all but vanished now; the pandemic response has shown us we can never be too prepared, and that any failure or disruption to operations can be catastrophic.

Many industrial processes require clean, dry air – air free of moisture. The presence of water, dust, bacteria, microorganisms and industrial acids can ruin products and foul processes. For instance, food and beverage manufacturers often use air in their packaging processes. By retaining moisture, the shelf life of the food items will be diminished. This is only one example, but by removing moisture and contaminants, it will help protect your downstream equipment and reduce maintenance costs and downtime.

An oil flooded rotary screw air compressor is a lot like the human body. It requires routine upkeep and regular checkups to make sure it’s functioning as it’s supposed to. To avoid any problems, Sullair recommends the following best practices to maintain the longevity of your industrial air compressor.

When we hear about the Fountains of Bellagio in Las Vegas or the Dubai Fountain at the Burj Khalifa in Dubai the first thing that comes to mind is likely the grandeur of the fountains and their choreographed performances set to lights and music. But beneath the surface of these world-famous attractions is a thoughtfully engineered design that aims to meet the same key drivers sought in any manufacturing setting: cost, energy savings and system functionality. Traditional fountains use pumps and pipes, but for displays of such size and power an air compressor has many benefits.