Compressors & Compressed Air Technology

The basic principle of Engineair technology is similar to the internal combustion engine, both use compressed air.

A 4 litre internal combustion engine is in fact using approximately a 1/4 of a million litres of air per hour running at 2000 rpm. The consumption of petrol in this case is for generating hot air, it is that hot air that pushes the pistons and powers a vehicle. The pollution at the exhaust point can kill a person within a short time.

If you were to multiply ¼ of a million litres of air per hour per car by the millions of cars we use each day this will give you an idea to the mess we are creating. 

In contrast Engineair technology is more efficient, affordable and sustainable, and can utilise all forms of clean energy such as solar, wind, geothermal and hydro without the need to pollute.

Energy loss in the form of heat while compressing air is a thing of the past
Most compressors lose that energy to the atmosphere mainly because the scale of compressing air is relatively small, however if we are compressing air on a large scale this energy can be captured economically and put to use for heating our homes, for hot water, cooking or even generating electricity.

The following comments are from Gast Manufacturing Corporation's book 'Vacuum and Pressure Systems Handbook' and it states:

"An air compressor does most of its work during the compression stroke.  This adds energy to the air by increasing its pressure.  Compression also generates heat, however, and the amount of work required to compress a quantity of air to a given pressure depends on how fast this heat is removed.  The compression work done will lie between the theoretical work requirements of two processes:
 
Adiabatic: a process having no cooling, the heat remains in the air, causing a pressure rise that increases compression work requirements to a maximum value.

Isothermal:  a process that provides perfect cooling, thus, there is no change in air temperature and the work required for compression is held to a minimum.”

So during the compression process, if we remove the heat from the air not only do we capture energy that would otherwise be wasted, we also move the process closer to  isothermal  so that it takes less energy to compress the same amount of air.

Here are pictures of some state-of-the-art modern compressors up to 350 bar