Conrad Latham, GM, Atlas Copco Compressor Technique, India, tells Jayashree Mendes the investments the company has made in improving energy efficiencies.
What are some of the applications of air compressors in Indian infrastructure?
Air compressors are used in almost all manufacturing industries from automotive to food & beverage. One of the applications in large manufacturing is instrument air where compressed air is used to power the opening and closing of valves, conveying lines or packaging machines. In the textile industry compressed air is used in many different applications from sorting to weaving and even for nitrogen generation for some specific denim manufacturing.
In automotive industries, compressed air is used extensively in the assembly process as well as in the paint shop to make sure that the cars are painted in a risk free and reliable way. In the beverage industry compressed air is used in the fermentation process as well as the bottle blowing process be it plastic or glass bottles.
Considering that it’s a niche market, how often do you emerge with innovative and technological savvy products?
Compressor technology under goes regular innovation and the drive to reduce the energy bills of our customers is the main force behind a lot of the innovation. Some of the big changes are the move from fixed speed compressors to variable speed compressors, that use only as much energy as required from the varying demand of the customers application. Recent changes have seen new designs in the compression process of the oil-free screw compressors. Atlas Copco has invested a lot of money in Computational Fluid Dynamics calculations to truly understand the detailed flow patterns of air as it moves through a compressor and has used it years of experience, test data and production statistics to highly refine the air and cooling medium channels in a compressor to drastically reduce pressure drops thereby improving the energy efficiency of the compressors it develops.
Of course a lot of innovation is taking place with Industry 4.0 and Atlas Copco has developed its Smartlink system where it connects the compressors and dryers to a centralized data warehouse. From here it can provide a huge amount of running data to improve uptime reliability for its customers as well as energy optimization solutions. The latest central compressed air room controller, Optimizer 4.0, is a great development in innovation, again driven by the desire to reduce customers energy usage. This unique controller can centrally optimize multiple compressors and dryers of different technologies as well as different compressor manufacturers.
It is not only in compressors and software that developments are taking place. Compressed air dryers are also a great area of energy saving and recently Atlas Copco launched the world’s first rotary drum dryer that guarantees -40 deg C pressure dewpoint. This is a compressed air dryer that uses almost no electricity to provide compressed air at a very high quality. Normally such systems would cost customers more than Rs 11 lakhs in electricity per year, and now we can provide a solution that is almost free to operate. This is real innovation.
Could you tell us about some of the new products you have launched recently?
Since the beginning of this year, we have seen multiple launches under our Compressor Technique Division. In January, a range of revolutionary compressors – GA 75-110 VSD (Variable Speed Drive) was introduced, which provides an enhanced Free Air Delivery (FAD) increase of up to 6% and reduces energy consumption by 50% on average.
In addition to this, we recently initiated the global launch of Smart Air Solutions as part of our Oil free air division and comprising of compressors and dryers such as ZR VSD Standard, MDG, ZS’s and ZE’s, Optimizer 4.0, GA VSD+ and ZH. Smart AIR Solutions are complete air or gas solutions designed to provide our customers with the lowest life cycle costs for their equipment. These new products will set new standards in reliability, energy efficiency and serviceability and are all part of the smart AIR solutions concept.
This year we have launched a total of 12 products, each individual product has been optimized for the best possible performance in energy efficiency, reliability and air quality. These products innovations in compressed air and gases have been targeted for the low, medium and high pressure markets.
How has the compressor industry evolved over the years?
One of the developments in the last few years is the number of compressors manufacturers that have entered the market. This increase has been driven by the increase in manufacturing mainly in countries like China and India but also due to optimization in countries like Germany and USA.
More and more companies are interested to reduce their energy bills and as compressed air can account for up to 30% of the energy usage in a company, finding ways to improve the efficiency of the compressed air system is a major evolution. Such best practices as using Variable Speed Drive (VSD) compressors, combining both centrifugal and screw compressors, using central compressor room controllers, new compressed air dryers and linking everything via Smartlink are seeing big energy savings and increased operational uptime and lifetime across many industries in India. In one recent project Atlas Copco was able to demonstrate an energy cost saving of more than 20 lakhs per year for one customer in the textile industry. Such savings help keep manufacturing in India competitive.
Brief us on some of the challenges facing this industry.
The major challenge in India for the compressed air industry is finding, training and retaining talented people. Atlas Copco has many career avenues so the challenge is slightly less but as a traditional engineering company it needs to continually find the most suitable graduates that are interested in a career where high variety in skills and knowledge is needed. A lot of compressor companies are facing this challenge and close collaboration with various universities and institutes is needed, combined with a structured training and competence development plan with clear career opportunities. The future appears to be bright for the manufacturing industry in India and companies like Atlas Copco need to make sure that we sustain the talent to support the growth over the coming years.