Geofabrics slashes pressure - and power bills

A recent energy audit at its manufacturing facility paved the way for Geofabrics to optimise its on-site compressed air system, and derive staggering ongoing energy savings.

For the past 23 years, Geofabrics has manufactured a range of innovative geosynthetic solutions - such as ‘spunbond’ non-woven continuous filament needle-punched geotextiles - from its headquarters in North Albury near the border of New South Wales and Victoria. The manufacturing process is highly reliant on compressed air - clean and dry compressed air at constant pressure is vital to the success of the fibre-drawing process. In fact, compressed air generation accounts for approximately two thirds of the site’s electricity consumption.

Recently, Geofabrics carried out a site energy audit, confirming the company’s suspicions that its manufacturing process had become somewhat energy intensive. As a result, the company executed a plant-wide overhaul of its manufacturing process. Central to the overhaul was the upgrade of the site’s compressed air system. Here, Geofabrics implemented a customised compressed air solution from Champion Compressors.

“Other compressor manufacturers could only offer off-the-shelf models incapable of meeting our operational requirements,” says Press. “We decided to go with the Champion solution as they had the ability to tailor the unit to our requirements.”

The customised Champion 160 kW VOC160 variable output compressor (VOC) is complemented by a suite of Champion's ancillary air-treatment equipment, including a refrigerated air dryer and a filtering system designed to remove contaminants down to 0.01 microns.

After one year in operation, the low-pressure air compressor has had a dramatic impact on Geofabrics’ bottom line, with the company reducing its power consumption by a staggering 12%. “The compressor has just about paid for itself after only a year,” says Press. “Now that we only have to drop the pressure from 4 to 3.2 bar, there’s very little energy wasted in compressing the air.”

Furthermore, additional savings have been realised through the upgrade and replacement of the facility’s compressed air-reticulation pipe work. “Air leaks have been virtually eliminated,” says Huber.

At present, the new low-pressure unit handles the majority of the process air production. When additional air is required, one of the legacy 7 bar compressors kicks in and provides the required top-up. This small remaining inefficiency is set to be remedied with the imminent delivery of a second low-pressure Champion compressor. However, this new unit will be equipped with variable speed drive (VSD) functionality.

With a strong likelihood for further energy savings, the future looks bright for Geofabrics. In fact, once installed, the second low-pressure compressor will provide the company with the capacity to increase production. “We now have a major part of the infrastructure in place to boost throughput should we require it,” says Press. “With support from Remtron and Champion Compressors, we’ve been able to take our manufacturing process to the next level.”

With the upgraded compressed air system already performing well and providing tangible economic returns, Press and his team have one less thing to worry about, allowing Geofabrics to get on with the real job at hand - producing innovative geosynthetic solutions. “The compressed air system upgrade has enabled us to realise a range of operational and environmental benefits,” says Press. “We’re looking forward to further optimising and expanding our production process when the time is right, safe in the knowledge that our energy savings will also continue to increase.”