Why all this stuff (in the compressor room)?

Compressed air.. it’s simple, right?! We just compress some air.. and let’s go!

Yeah, I like simple too. But in real life, things are a little more complicated…

Just take a look around in your compressor room. You will find all kinds op equipment.

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Air Compressors
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Different types of compressed air filters

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Air receivers
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Compressed air dryers
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Flow meters
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Pressure sensors
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Control systems
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Condensate traps
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and more…
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Why is that? Why do we need all that equipment?

Compressed air is just… air that is compressed. So why do we need all that stuff? Why do we need all that equipment when in essence, compressed air is so simple?

It is because there are a lot of different side-effects, so to say, that add-on to this simple picture of compressing air.

Things to think about

The Compressor

Of course, we need an air compressor to create the compressed air.

But there are many different models, types and sizes available. Which one is right for us?

Oil in air

Most air compressors are oil-filled. The oil is used for both lubrication and removal of heat.

Unfortunately, oil-filled air compressors do one thing: they leak oil into the compressed air.

This is called oil carry over. And normally it’s just a tiny bit, but it is enough to be a problem for sensitive application or if you work with food, medicine or do spray painting for example.

Contaminations in ambient air

The ambient air that we take in to compress isn’t clean. It contains dust, water vapor and other contaminations (traces of oil, exhaust gasses, etc).

This might not seem like a big deal to you.. some dust in the air, who cares, right?

But remember, the air is compressed. In most industrial compressed air systems, the air is compressed 7-8 times smaller than it was. This means, it is concentrated 7 or 8 times. The dust, water, exhaust gasses are more concentrated as well!

So on average, we get 8 times more dust. And we get 8 times more water vapor.

What’s the problem?

The water vapor will condense into liquid water. Together with de high concentration of dust particles, it can cause damage to machines, air tools or your end product.

Now this can be a problem or not. It depends on what you use your compressed air for. But in general we will need a certain minimum level of compressed air quality.

Compressed air quality is a very big and important topic and in later lessons we’ll go into much more details about it and also discuss the equipment we use to clean the compressed air.

Transportation of compressed air

Now that we have cleaned compressed air, we need to transport it to the point of use. And we need it there at the right pressure!

Probably… we will need compressed air at various locations around our factory.

We need a compressed air distribution system to distribute the compressed air around our factory.

Pressure regulation

The end users (machines and equipment working on compressed air) need a certain, stable, pressure to work correctly.

We need a compressor control system to maintain a stable pressure inside our system (in a later lesson we will see how we control pressure in a compressed air system).