Air audit can help textile mills save on energy cost

Energy conservation has become a focus for textile mills in view of the rising energy cost. Interestingly, the most expensive component in the total cost of compressed air is energy, says Anvar Jay Varadaraj, Head, Marketing and Corporate Communications, Elgi Equipments.

To demonstrate the real savings on energy, the Coimbatore-based air compressor manufacturing major has joined hands with Indian Texpreneurs Federation (ITF) and designed a comprehensive programme on air audit.

The programme includes an information session for owners and managers, on compressed air best practices, practical training sessions for maintenance engineers, and air audit programmes that help recognise cost savings.

Varadaraj said under the Elgi-ITF programme, air audits were conducted across 130 textile mills in the South over the past 12 months. The annual savings worked out to ₹14 crore with an average compressed air energy cost reduction of 43 per cent.

Elgi will look at such partnership with machinery manufacturers across different sectors such as pharmaceutical and automobile. The company has invested significant sums over the past two years, designing sustainable solutions that can help companies achieve their productivity goals, he said, without quantifying the investment.

The company recently launched a service, Air Alert, which is a free-of-cost, sim-based, data-transmission service that will monitor the compressor’s critical parameters to ensure optimum energy consumption and compressor failure prevention.

Varadaraj said Elgi is committed to 500 air-alert-equipped machines by the end of this calendar year. “We have, to date, inserted the air-alert sim in (Elgi) compressors owned by 21 members of the federation.

Explaining the term air audit, Varadaraj said it is a review of an operation’s use of compressed air, taking into account both generation and distribution.

While review of generation is a comparison of energy consumption, current condition and application to original specification, distribution evaluates the use of compressed air in the plant, which could include leak in the air lines and general consumption.

Commenting on the tie-up, Prabhu Damodaran, Secretary, ITF, said the relationship is focussed on intelligent energy monitoring and optimising air consumption levels. “In our estimate, a spinning mill with 20,000 spindles will be able to achieve ₹1 crore savings on energy cost,” he said.

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