Efficient drive technology for efficient screw compressors

Oil-Free Compressed Air

Many sectors depend on clean compressed air. These range from the food, beverage and pharmaceuticals industries to hospitals and building technology. Further examples include laboratories and paint shops, as well as the paper processing and electrical industries. At the same time, when it comes to generating compressed air, energy efficiency is an extremely important factor in all these areas – not just for cost reasons but also in terms of ecology and sustainability. Oil-free screw compressors from AquaAir in Augsburg combined with intelligent control systems for compressed air management offer the right approach here. Powerful inverter drives, highly efficient motors and tailor-made control technology from Yaskawa play a key role in such concepts. Energy efficiency and sustainability as well as first-class technical support were persuasive arguments when it came to awarding the contract.

It is still widely believed that using oil as a lubricant in the compressor makes the process of compressing air more energy-efficient and thereby makes compressed air cheaper. Thus, every year, millions of barrels of mineral oil are used to generate compressed air and then disposed of as waste oil and oily condensate. Moreover, the oil tightness is never guaranteed. The compressed air that is contaminated with oil disperses the oil in the environment and contaminates products. This must be avoided at all costs, especially in the food or pharmaceutical industry. The effort and costs for procuring, filtering and disposing of the oil are therefore considerable, canceling out a significant portion of the envisaged energy savings. So why use oil in the compression process if oil-free compressed air is cheaper to produce and works better?