So how much is an air leak really costing you?

Not only are air leaks noisy and dangerous to be around they also cost your company money to maintain. Let us look at a simple example, most air demands only require 100psig for proper operations and at that pressure one single 1/64" leak in your plants air piping causes you to lose 0.4 cfm. OK so 0.4cfm is not a lot and you do not need to worry about it, right? Wrong in a normal 8 hour day that little air leak will account for 192cfm that’s almost 50 horsepower worth of electricity or better yet that’s 37kilowatts of energy used per day to feed an air leak. Normal 40-hour work week that puts you at 185kW and 52 weeks annually that is 9620kW. Now that is just one leak, I am sure your plant has more than one leak. So how harmful are your leaks?

How much are you spending on compressed air?

Most people have no idea just how much their company spends on compressed air. Setting aside the upfront cost of purchasing and installing an air compressor companies have to pay every month for either fuel, electricity, or some other utility to power their compressors. According to the Compressed Air and Gas Institute (CAGI) for every 2 psi of compressed air made it takes 1% of the compressors horsepower. So if you want to know what it is costing your company right now run the compressor in the back of your building here is a simple formula to use.

cost = (horsepower) (service factor) (0.746) (operating hours) (electrical cost) / (motor efficiency)

Give it a try if you dare.

my next posting will show how to start lowering the operating cost for compressed air.