Using Excel to Evaluate Air Compressor Performance

摘要

Air compressors are ubiquitous in industrial facilities, as well as in many commercial facilities. Evaluating compressor performance typically uses both a flow and power measurement. However, flow measurements require specialized flow meters and installation or expensive external ultrasonic meters, so they are seldom done. Temporary power monitoring can be performed with data loggers that record current or true power. There are many of these in the market ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. Using compressor performance curves, the air flows can be calculated from the power data. Due to the quantity of data recorded, spreadsheets can be helpful in performing the conversion calculations. This article describes the steps needed to perform these calculations. Upon calculating flows, further analysis on the compressor efficiency can be considered.