There Is Profit In Your Powerhouse: by Jesus R. Sifonte, P.E.

    During my career as a Maintenance Professional for the Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Industry, my primary concern was making sure the production teams had their equipment up to par, in order to keep production running smoothly. During those times, and it still holds true, we were reminded that production paid our bills, and in fact, they were right. During the Pharmaceutical Industry boom of the 80's and early 90's, nobody would pay attention to a drop in a bucket. Today, the operational costs of plants have soared so steeply by comparison, that now everything that can result in cost reduction must be considered.

    Generally speaking, Income = Revenues – Expenses, as such, Income can be increased by either increasing Revenues or decreasing Expenses. Based on this premise, our goal is to increase business sales every year, but the reality is that only one third (or less) of your sales increase eventually becomes profit. On the other hand, reducing operational expenses brings money straight to your company’s pocket. Where can we find these candidates for cost-reduction, and how much profit can we really expect from reducing their operating expenses? There are two big sources of hidden income, and those are:

1) Your Utilities Room

2) Machinery Over Maintenance

    We will now discuss how to obtain profit from your Powehouse, and will consider Machine Over-Maintenance in an upcoming article.

    Let’s think for a minute about compressed air and steam, which are the most common and expensive utilities a plant produces. Atmosphere air is free, but compressed air is quite expensive and if we analyze the breakdown of costs associated with compressed air, we notice that most of it (75%) is related to energy consumption, about 13% is capital investment and, only 12% is maintenance related (See Figure 1). The big chunk is in energy consumption, which is related to the operation of the compressors, or specifically, how much of the time the compressors are loaded. Herein lies our first source of hidden income, in reducing energy consumption. How can this be achieved? To explain, there is another fact I'd like to share with you: Only 50% of the produced air goes to the end user, another 34% is leaked to the atmosphere, and 16% is misused (See Figure 2). Part of the waste (34%) is controllable if we can establish an aggressive leak detection and correction program meant to maintain the leak rate below 5%. Savings of hundreds of thousands of dollars can be obtained from such a program depending on the plant size and the procedures followed for leak detection and correction. One of our success stories comes to mind on this regard about one of our clients who was able to turn off one of their three 300 HP compressors.

                        Figure 1:

                             Figure 2:

    What about steam? Typically 20-30% of a plant's steam traps do not work properly. Within this population of “failing traps”, some remain open, others may either fail close or plugged, etc. A failing trap causes two major situations: one is an energy waste issue, and the second is the malfunctioning of the systems depending on them. For example: it will take longer for a bulk product dryer to complete its cycle if its steam traps failed either open or close. Also, a process Air Handling Unit may not be able to control temperature or humidity if its traps are failing, causing delays to the manufacturing process. Eventually, these situations may have an effect in the cost of the end product. Also, the cost of producing steam has soared during the last couple of years, mostly due to the increase in the price of fuel. After comparing the cost of producing steam in 2003 with the cost of doing so in 2007, we were shocked to see that there had been an increase of almost 80%. The results of energy conservation audits are truly astonishing; we have seen opportunities for savings ranging from $100,000 to $450,000, and that was just in one plant site. This is yet another hidden profit in your Powerhouse.

    Significant profit can be obtained from reducing operating expenses in your boiler and compressor rooms. Ultrasound techniques play a significant role in a successful energy conservation program. The saving potential is enormous and the impact in plant efficiency and productivity are experienced immediately. Though steam and compressed air distribution issues are costly, it is also true that they can be detected and solved in a relatively short time. Just after completing a plant survey, you will realize that the saving potential is 20 to 40 times your investment and that your final benefit to cost ratio after correction of the problem can be around 20:1 in just one year. Let's start turning that hidden income in your Powerhouse into real income.