Reducing High Pressure Compressor Downtime During Maintenance
Time is money and in a busy production environment, you want to ensure that downtime is kept to an absolute minimum to help maximise productivity – and profitability.
This is especially the case with your high pressure air compressor. Over 10 per cent of all the electricity supplied to industry is used to compress air; an indication of the scale and size of the installed estate of air compressors across the globe. Operators are therefore keen to maintain maximum uptime of these ‘workhorses’ of modern production to ensure there is no impact to the bottom line.However, any piston compressor will require support throughout its working life, including routine, planned maintenance to protect equipment reliability and performance - especially in high-pressure applications, where production output is reliant on a continuous source of high-quality air.
The Carbon Trust estimates that around seven per cent of a compressor’s cost of ownership over a ten-year lifecycle is its maintenance. While energy costs will always remain the highest proportion of overall spend, this is by no means an insignificant sum and any maintenance improvements that can be realised will have a positive impact.
It’s not a new dilemma; striking the right balance between equipment operating hours, essential compressor maintenance and production demands is not a straightforward task. The question is not whether compressor servicing can be avoided, but how maintenance can be made simpler and therefore, quicker. It’s a question we are often asked at Gardner Denver – especially in relation to high-pressure compressor products which are often viewed as complicated and therefore, time-intensive to maintain.Here’s our short guide to some of the areas to consider when investing in high-pressure air compressor.
