November 2024
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Inside the November Issue |
Identifying Air and Gas Leaks
BY DARRELL TAYLOR
The other day I performed a Google search for How to detect an
air leak . Not surprisingly it came up with millions of results, over
18 million in fact. Whether solving the problem in a commercial
establishment or a domestic home environment, the majority of
search results pointed to one solution. Namely, soapy water!
Before we all ridicule the idea as belonging to a bygone era, take a vehicle with a slow puncture to a tire fitting depot and the chances are they remove the wheel and spin it in water to determine the leak. It´s a simple time proven method for determining leaks from pressurized systems.
But of course, not all equipment can be placed in soapy water. What if a system is known to be losing pressure and yet the lines carrying the compressed air from the source are located 10 meters above the ground, and dismantling the system is out of the question? Thankfully there is a fast and effective solution to hand.
Each time air or indeed any gas, leaks from a pressured system there is an associated sound. If the leak is significant, it can be audible to the human ear and therefore easily identified and rectified accordingly. However, most leaks in high pressure systems are extremely small and are out of the range of a human ear.
Think about a pressured air system in a large factory delivering compressed air from a bank of compressors to various stages of production throughout the manufacturing process. The chances are there are hundreds if not thousands of connections in the form of joints, reducers, valves, elbows, condensers etc. Each of these has the potential to leak small amounts of air, reducing the pressure of the system.
One leak might make very little difference but multiply this
by the number of potential leaking joints and efficiency can be
significantly compromised. The compressor will seek to compensate
for any pressure loss by simply working harder. However,
as any engineer will know, compressors can be expensive to operate in terms of energy and therefore will certainly increase
an operator’s energy consumption.
With electricity costs being so much higher in Europe due to geopolitical factors in recent years, most companies are seeking to reduce the amount of energy used. Having a compressor work overtime to compensate for leaking joints is certainly not something senior management would smile about!
These scenarios are certainly not uncommon, in fact one European compressor manufacturer has stated that in some industrial settings, up to 80 percent of air generated is lost in leaks. So clearly identifying these small leaks can make a real difference to a company´s energy bills. Full story »
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