Energy Impact of Air Pre-cooling on Screw Air Compressor

摘要

Air compressors are widely used in a variety of industries. The energy consumed by air compressors comprises a significant portion of the overall energy consumption in industrial plants. Both theoretical and experimental studies were conducted to investigate the impacts of air pre-cooling on the energy consumption of air compressor. Experiments were performed on a 11 kW screw air compressor. The paper presents the details of the modelling as well as the measured results. The results indicate that the energy consumption decreases by 0.65% for every l'C drop in suction temperature. The energy consumption decreases 0.243% for every 1% dropin suction relative humidity. Significant compressor energy consumption can be reduced by pre-treating or pre-cooling suction air.