 | | SIGMA AIR MANAGER and SIGMA AIR CONTROL | |
Compressed air savings made easy |  |
Around 80 billion kWh of electrical energy is consumed annually in Europe to produce compressed air. At least 30 percent of this energy could be saved through optimisation of these air systems. Innovative products such as the SIGMA AIR MANAGER and SIGMA AIR CONTROL, which use information and control technology, help users to profit from this savings potential.
How much is a cubic metre of compressed air? There is no one answer as the actual air consumption, required pressure, necessary air quality as well as the energy, capital and maintenance costs need to be considered. A prerequisite for optimisation of an air system to achieve significant energy and cost savings is to carry out an air demand analysis (ADA) such as Kaeser can offer. But to ensure costs savings over the long term, more is needed than just a one-off analysis, corresponding new design or modernisation of the air system.
Air demand of a production facility can fluctuate considerably over the course of a single working day. If air production costs are to be saved under these conditions, then one should strive to optimise interaction between the compressors and all other components within the system. The solution lies with the SIGMA AIR MANAGER. It is the first air management system to use internet technology and is a master controller and a web server in one. It optimises operation of the compressors and minimises their power requirement by automatically selecting the correct compressor configuration, reducing idling periods and lowering maximum system pressure.
SIGMA AIR MANAGER takes advantage of modern pressure band control to reduce the pressure and can coordinate up to 16 compressors with a pressure swing of only ±0.1 bar.
Under present economic conditions, new requirements can be imposed on an air supply system practically from one day to the next. Efficient air management must be capable of quickly adapting the capacity of the system to a change in demand without too much effort and to guarantee cost-efficient air production. SIGMA AIR CONTROL plus has a long-term analysis tool that can be used without the need for special software via any desktop computer with a standard browser and Internet access. SIGMA AIR CONTROL plus has all the features from the standard SIGMA AIR CONTROL, for example a password-protected overview of current compressor status, a profile of recent system pressures or maintenance and alarm messages. But the HTML pages generated by SIGMA AIR CONTROL plus hold a lot more in store. They visually display a vast array of additional data from the SIGMA AIR MANAGER's long-term memory and provide graph overviews. On-load and off-load (idling) states, system pressure, power consumption and compressor duty cycles can be displayed and evaluated from various aspects for an elapsed period of up to one year. Therefore, the user can keep a constant eye on operation of the air system and air costs as they develop. |
