Compressed Air Measurement Helps Reduce Energy Use

There are all kinds of good reasons to save energy in your production facility. Aside from desires to reduce the environmental footprint of a plant, perhaps receiving a tax rebate in the process, saving energy also saves money. Using compressed air responsibly—through the use of Industry 4.0 technologies—is a good way to get started down that green path.

A typical pneumatics schematic shows how prevalent compressed air is in a life sciences manufacturing environment.FestoCompressed air is a very common energy source for automation in the life sciences industry—used in particular to activate a wide range of valves and linear actuators in the production of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), solution preparation, solid preparation, packaging automation, and more. It’s a clean source of energy that is readily available, powerful, and simple. It’s also a great place to look if you want to save energy. It takes significant electrical costs to generate compressed air, so managing the use of that compressed air can be instrumental in a plant’s overall energy consumption strategy. And it’s a common place for waste, where leaks often go undetected.