Podcast: How compressed air innovations over the last 10 years have shaped industrial maintenance

RM: Yes, that's right, it's the acoustical leak detectors. They are cutting edge! With the premium price tag. But that price tag is coming down quite substantially now that more players are getting into the industry. Just about every leak detector manufacturer has acoustical imager in their portfolio, and that is really good. Before you had something that was like a gun, with a cone on the end, and you pointed it here and there and you could hear leaks and other things too – maybe electrical corona, bad bearings, or things like that. You could hear the general direction of the leakage, but it really didn't pinpoint where it was.

With these acoustical detections devices, there's a visual image generated by a camera, and there's directional microphones in the back, and it overlays a signal and detects where the leak is in your image and tells you exactly where it is. That really speeds up the leak detection process and helps you identify even through caging, even from the floor, up 20 feet in the air, you can see exactly where that leak is and what pipe it's on, and that's important. 

One time I was in this manufacturer where they had more than just air, they had welding gases going in the pipes. I shone that thing up in the into the ceiling, and I found a very expensive leak, a $33,000/year leak in an argon supply. It was only 1 cfm, so if it was compressed air, not really much to worry about. But with argon much more expensive than compressed air, that would have paid for the unit right on the spot. Just that one leak.

PS: Either that or that's some way towards getting more headcount too, What could you do with 33,000 more dollars?

RM: Yeah, that's right. So that's a really exciting development in the compressed air world and there's more and more plants now that have at least one imager available to them. There's new developments in the imager field, too, where they're coupling them to infrared and all that stuff, so it’s pretty nice.

PS: I think of this as the “camera revolution” among condition monitoring. It’s the acoustical imagers. plus you've got motion amplification technologies which take high speed video of the asset and slow it down where you can see things wobble and vibrate. I’ve heard a lot of technicians who say that the data that's the convincer to get money for reliability programs is these kinds of visual data. When you see it, you tend to believe it. 

You also mentioned that there's a movement in the works to develop a universal agreed-upon air compressor communication protocol. Right now, some of these devices have trouble talking to each other, and this isn't directly related to condition monitoring, it's not going to assess machine health, but it's more moving the data around when you are taking these measurements and getting signals back. Could you talk about what's happening with third party controls providers in this area?

RM: Sure, it's very important to be able to monitor air compressors, to see what their operating parameters are, if they're overheating, various things like that. Control is very important as well, to be able to control compressors, tell them to load and unload in a strategic fashion. The problem with the air compressor industry is there's different communication protocols for each manufacturer, right? One manufacturer might have Profibus, one might have Modbus, one might have CAN bus, and when you try to tie them together so that they are communicating with one another, it's impossible between manufacturers. It's not like the HVAC industry where they came up with a common protocol like BACnet, where various different manufacturers could connect to one communication bus. 

So yeah these communication providers are now figuring out the various communication protocols for each different manufacturer, and they're putting them together, actually have a little box that translates the language and brings them together in, say, a web-based software package where you can monitor the compressors so the software would indicate if the compressor is overheating or what the conditions are. You can see that all in a dashboard and be able to control the compressors using that digital data rather than just sending digital signals to load and unload compressors, which is the old way of doing it, or tricking the compressors to see a different pressure than there actually is. That used to be done as well, but now you can write to the compressors and tell them to load and unload or alter the settings all through this software. 

More and more of these providers are starting to do that now, and once you're hooked into those compressor controls, there's a lot of information that you can take out of them, and that tells you a lot about how that compressor is running, and maybe flags when maintenance is required or things are going out of bounds. This is on the dashboard, or you might receive an e-mail, that there's something happening. That's starting to develop now, even down to the compressor condensate drain level too, I've seen some drains that communicate with some sort of computer as well. I guess it's the IoT era, where things are starting to talk with one another.

PS: You know, there was a comment made sort of an editor to editor meeting this week where were thinking that a lot of folks who are doing IoT, if you ask them if they have IoT setups, they'll say “no, we don't have IoT in the plants.” But when you say, are you moving data around this way and that way and storing it in the cloud? “Oh yeah, we do all that!” IoT has slowly crept in one sensor at a time and one asset at a time.

RM: Yeah, that's right. In the compressed air industry, information is power, so it’s good that you get the most information possible. The software packages now gather that information and show you the important stuff and flag when things go wrong.

PS: I'm curious if you if you can give a thumbnail estimate. Clearly this something which is a gradual evolution rather than a targeted effort by any one or two manufacturers. Would you say we'll be there where the devices can talk to each other or over a common protocol within three years? five years? Or is this going to take the time it takes?

RM: Well, that's on my wish list and I really hope that the manufacturers get together and talk with a standard communication protocol. There's so many of the older compressors out there that are talking with the old protocol. I'd be very surprised if it actually happens, right? Not with the OEM's, maybe. I don't know. I don't think it's going to happen soon.

PS: I like the fact that the discussion is underway and I know a good integrator partner can help people out with these kind of challenges too, on a plant to plant basis.

RM: Yeah, that's right. The possibility is there. People out there who have received a new compressor, some of those compressors have cell phone connections on them. You see a little antenna on top of the compressor. The manufacturers are using that, sending data back to the main office or whatever to tell people that maybe the oil needs changing or there's high vibration, or things like that. People can subscribe to that service and get that information themselves; or, the manufacturers just use it for their own purposes, and that helps them as well. But I can see with some sort of interface like that you could pull things together in a room full of even different manufacturers, and come up with a really good dashboard that could help the maintenance people.

PS: Let's finish with the last category you covered in your article, which is professionalization and opportunities in that direction. You specifically called out two certifications that are setting the bar in the compressor industry. Could you describe those?

RM: Yeah, yeah. The first one is CAGI Certified Compressed Air System Specialist (CCASS). There really isn't a certification in the compressed air industry, not a common one anyway, so CAGI came up with this certification. It's really a general level of understanding of compressed air for the compressed air professionals. You write this exam, it proves that you have a general level of knowledge, and you can call yourself a certified compressed air system specialist. And that's good to have, you can put it in your e-mail signature and things like that, it lets people know that you know what you're talking about. 

Then there's a second level of certification – CCASA,  Certified Compressed Air System Auditor, and that is going to be for compressed air geeks like me, where we go around doing audits of compressed air systems. It's going to be quite a more difficult exam that you have to write to prove your worth, and then that'll get you a pretty nice certification to show that you are very good auditor, a knowledgeable auditor. 

The problem with the certifications is CAGI really doesn't provide the training. It takes a lot of experience of course, plus some book learning. There is a body of knowledge that you have to be familiar with to be able to pass the exam. Compressed Air Challenge provides a big portion of that body of knowledge through the training that we have, the fundamentals and the advanced training. There's a new training about system assessments as well, and that information people have found really helps prepare for the examination. 

There's other things, too. There's some standards that people should be familiar with, the ASME EA4, and CAGI provides an online training that you should be familiar with too. CAGI also has a handbook, a very extensive handbook that's available for free download for people, and it would be recommended to go through that and to get familiar with that. But the key is, I believe anyway, the fundamentals and advanced training from the Compressed Air Challenge. So I would recommend that for anyone that wants to write for their CCASS or CCASA examination. Now I just wanted to say that the CCASA, I just checked the website today, it's still saying “coming soon,” but I would imagine within the next few months that'll start to be active.

About the Podcast
Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast offers news and information for the people who make, store and move things and those who manage and maintain the facilities where that work gets done. Manufacturers from chemical producers to automakers to machine shops can listen for critical insights into the technologies, economic conditions and best practices that can influence how to best run facilities to reach operational excellence.

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