Wireless Improves Efficiency in Compressed Air Systems

Hollingsworth & Vose (H&V) Company

Hollingsworth & Vose (H&V) Company is one of the world's leading engineered papers and nonwoven materials manufacturers with more than 1,000 employees in 16 cities around the world.

Hollingsworth and Vose wanted to improve the efficiency of their compressed air system, lower the electricity expense component of manufacturing cost in their commodity industry, and conserve energy leading to lowered greenhouse gas emissions. Compressed air systems degrade over time and become leaky and inefficient. Hollingsworth and Vose wanted to increase the frequency of system inspections without paying the high cost of manual labor.

The SensiNet system was configured to monitor key operating parameters of the system including temperature, line pressure, airflow, and energy usage of the compressor. SensiNet software was employed to display the data, and the graphical user interface and data display made it easy to spot trends leading to system degradation. The monitoring and reporting interval was set at one minute. A complete system profile was then measured every minute, and small changes in system performance became visible immediately.

• [Efficiency Improvement - Maintenance]
  

  Real-time status reports every minute enable maintenance personnel to remotely diagnose the status of a device.

• [Efficiency Improvement - Operation]
  

  Problems are indicated to line operators when the condition of a device or associated equipment changes beyond predetermined limits.

• [Data Management - Data Analysis]
  

  Cloud solutions enable aggregation of 'big data' to enable more robust analysis.

• A 50% efficiency gain on the compressed air system reduced annual operating costs by $26,000 for a five-year projected savings of $130,000.

• With a system cost of $10,500, payback is 5 months and 5-year ROI is 13:1.