Pneumatic controls can
lead to energy efficiency, cost savings and improved overall equipment
effectiveness.
Learning Objectives
- Understand how pneumatics can improve energy efficiency and overall equipment effectiveness (OEE).
- Learn how technology advances can help pneumatics improve a plant’s automation and efficiency.
- Learn how pneumatics how can reduce a facility’s overall costs and improve profitability.
Pneumatics
insights
- Pneumatics is an effective and cost-competitive technology for plant automation and is applied from very simple to highly complex control solutions, directly impacting overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) of a machine or production line when sized and designed properly.
- Today’s pneumatics can address primary industry concerns, including sustainability, the labor shortage and competitive markets, by providing valuable insights and monitoring.
- Pneumatic controls address plant concerns by offering energy-efficient solutions, OEE improvement, predictive maintenance and cost savings in the field, as well as in the design phase of machines.
Today’s plants
are being held to ever-greater standards while using fewer resources and less
skilled labor. To help them reach net-zero targets and produce more in greater
varieties using the staff they have, many organizations are incorporating the
latest control technologies, including pneumatics.
Applied from
very simple to highly complex control systems, pneumatic technologies remain
popular, effective and cost-competitive automation solutions. And with good
reason. The pneumatic controls a machine or production line uses can directly
impact overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), sustainability and costs.
The latest
pneumatic technologies are designed to support the future of automation — and
its innovations and challenges — from the component level up. As more
facilities digitally transform, many pneumatic technologies can help provide
seamless integration to higher-level control systems via the use of Fieldbus
technology, embedded sensors and electronics.
In this way,
they can help provide valuable insights and real-time monitoring, so the right
team members receive the right information about important factors from energy
use to performance levels at the right time.
To achieve the
full promise pneumatics offers, it’s critical to understand the technologies
available, as well as how to size and design them for maximum sustainability,
productivity and cost-savings.
Figure
1: Pneumatics is an effective, fundamental and cost-competitive technology for
plant automation. Courtesy: Emerson
Pneumatics
save energy
As more
organizations set corporate sustainability targets, plants are pressed to
identify waste and optimize energy use. Due to the high-energy intensity of
compressed air, many factories are implementing programs to reduce compressed
air consumption. By helping operators minimize or prevent leakage and improve
inefficient processes, pneumatic pressure sensors, flow meters and control
solutions are playing an increasing role in these initiatives, as well as
supporting the implementation of energy management systems according to ISO
50001 via adequate monitoring.
Pneumatic
controls and advanced smart sensors can provide both direct and indirect
information about the energy consumption of a system. If combined intelligently
with industrial hardware and software for higher analytics, the overall
solution can help detect leaks in their early stages and balance pneumatic
devices to help reduce energy use.
This level of
insight also can empower staff with key performance indicators (KPIs) and
trends to make data-driven decisions that can improve energy savings, reach
sustainability initiatives and reduce pneumatics maintenance intensity and air
audits.
For example,
there are fully assembled compressed air monitoring cabinets that include smart
airflow sensors, edge hardware and connected software. The integrated solution
collects and analyzes the constant inflow of data from the sensor via OPC UA
and allows deeper understanding of consumption trends and possible leakage, as
well as offering insight on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions impact.
Plants can directly connect multiple smart airflow sensors to the cabinet and
scale as needed. Pre-engineered and preconfigured, these cabinets make it
possible for plants to install and deploy the monitoring solution to start
visualizing and benchmarking compressed air consumption for a machine or
production line.
In addition to
the visibility and control provided by real-time pneumatic monitoring and
insights, the design of pneumatic controls can help save energy. Some pneumatic
control solutions are designed to allow air recycling in actuator movements,
saving compressed air in each return stroke of pneumatic cylinders.
Where possible,
placing pneumatic control valves in proximity of the actuators or pneumatic
cylinders can further reduce compressed air. Adding pressure regulating valves
to reduce pressure to the necessary levels in many applications can help save
compressed air, too.
Figure
2: The latest pneumatic solutions can help plants save energy, improve OEE and
reduce costs in the field as well as in the design phase of machines. Courtesy:
Emerson
Improve
a facility’s OEE through data access
Today’s
factories face a combination of production challenges, including unplanned
machine downtime, high scrap rates, unstable product quality and machine
performance issues, as well as labor and skill set shortage. Pneumatics can
play an important role in driving higher productivity by addressing many of
these factors. It all starts with access to pneumatic data.
To maximize
plant efficiency using the equipment, labor power and skill set that an
organization has, it’s important that teams receive analytics and actionable
insights about the pneumatic systems in machines and lines. This real-time
information can help personnel across skill levels identify component health,
reasons for scrap rate, product quality levels and more.
By adding smart
airflow sensors to a pneumatic system or incorporating smart pneumatic devices
that include embedded sensors, plants can gather and access key process and
application data. Using an industrial PC, edge device or in the cloud, software
can then perform analytics on gathered data points.
Operators can
access resulting analytics and insights via a dashboard, gaining better
visibility of and control over performance. For instance, they can adjust and
optimize machine variables as needed, reducing cycle time while maximizing
machine uptime, improving OEE.
The right
personnel can receive this information right when it’s needed, regardless of
skill and experience level. Operators can establish thresholds on key
parameters, such as cylinder speed, position feedback and pressure level, and
the analytics software can send alert messages when the pneumatic system
operates outside of those limits.
Once received,
the right personnel can take the appropriate action, preventing possible
failure and minimizing unplanned downtime. In this way, taking the right action
at the right time over and over again can improve overall efficiency and
productivity.
As most edge
gateways are prepared to work with OPC UA or message queuing telemetry
transport (MQTT), accessing data from a pneumatic system in these
industry-accepted formats is key. Pneumatic controls and sensors that connect
via Ethernet, providing OPC UA or MQTT communication to an edge gateway for
analytics, can be integral to achieve an organization’s desired plant/machine
monitoring solutions.
However,
implementing IO-Link is becoming a widely accepted standard. IO-Link-ready
sensors and devices can be an advantage in the design and rollout of industrial
internet of things (IIoT) solutions in factories due to their easy
commissioning and reliable communication. IO-Link Masters allow data exchange
between IO-Link-capable transmitters, sensors or devices in an automation
system and are fundamental for bringing this information to the control network
architecture or to the edge for further analytics.
When pneumatic
valve systems are installed within a machine or located somewhere out of reach,
commissioning and performing diagnostics can be inconvenient and
time-consuming. A pneumatic valve system with Fieldbus technology and auto
recovery module (ARM) makes it easy for technicians to perform pneumatic valve
system commissioning and diagnostics from a Wi-Fi-enabled mobile phone, tablet
or laptop, regardless of where the valve system is mounted. This helps
manufacturers reduce production downtime, simplifies valve system commissioning
and creates a path for using diagnostics for analytics.
At the
component design level, proportional valves are a great example of pneumatic
controls that can impact plant efficiency. Precise control of liquids and
gasses makes it possible for plants to optimize machinery and processes. This
can increase efficiency with production throughput as well as reduce raw
material use and energy consumption.
It’s important
to look for proportional valve technology that can quickly adjust output
pressure or flow in relation to variable operating conditions. This technology
also can provide greater flexibility of system design and operation.
Figure
3: The AVENTICS Series 615 Sentronic TWIN from Emerson is a compact, 3-way
proportional pressure control valve that accurately adjusts pressure to control
air and inert gas media via ATC software. Courtesy: Emerson
Reduce overall costs with pneumatics
The benefits of
pneumatic monitoring are clear. By helping to minimize waste and increase
productivity, pneumatics naturally helps plants reduce costs. Yet, pneumatic
technologies can provide significant cost-savings in other ways.
There are
well-known advantages of pneumatic technologies, like lower installation and
maintenance costs. Pneumatic controls are relatively easy to maintain, and worn
parts can be replaced using prepackaged spare kits. Pneumatic components have
high reliability and are easy to install, lowering commission time as well. The
lower capital expenditure of pneumatic systems is often an important factor for
choosing this technology over others in many automation applications.
There also are
less obvious ways pneumatics can help plants reduce costs, such as during the
specification and machine design process. Pneumatic systems, if properly
designed and sized, present reliable lasting solutions lowering machine
downtime, hence providing overall cost savings. Online tools can make it easy
to size actuators and valves and confirm the results of manual calculations.
Additional original equipment manufacturer (OEM) tools, like cylinder finders,
allow for selecting an optimal actuator series for the given parameters. Online
energy consumption applications help to review the energy impact of specific
configurations or selections.
More machine
designers also are maximizing the advantages of pneumatic and electric
technologies and incorporating hybrid solutions. In hybrid systems, electric
actuators are coupled with pneumatic cylinders. By adding pneumatic cylinders
with the proper pneumatic control to maintain force balance, machine
manufacturers are able to size for smaller electric actuators. These hybrid
solutions capture all the benefits of each technology and can present
significant cost-saving opportunities.
Figure
4: Pre-engineered in preconfigured, the Emerson Compressed Air Manager includes
proven AVENTICS AF2 airflow sensors, PACSystems edge gateway and advanced
software and makes it easy for plants to start monitoring pneumatic systems.
Courtesy: Emerson
Moving automation forward today — and tomorrow
The advantages
of pneumatics are well known; however, new innovations are making this highly
reliable, cost-competitive technology even better. The latest pneumatic
solutions can help plants save energy, improve OEE and reduce costs in the
field as well as in the design phase of machines. By integrating advanced
pneumatic control solutions with real-time monitoring and analytics, plants can
reach sustainability goals, empower their workforce and continue to remain
competitive today and into the future.
Written by:
