Compressors and air treatment

Over ten years, electricity is usually 75–80% of what a compressor costs you. The purchase price is often under 15%. As a rough figure, 1 m³/min of air at 7 bar needs about 6 kW running continuously. Multiply by your tariff and your running hours and the number is normally larger than people expect.

Not by adding up the nameplate ratings of every machine, that always oversizes. We fit data loggers for a week and size from measured demand, including how often peak load actually happens. It is common for the answer to be a smaller machine than the customer expected.

In Pakistan, the Gulf and most of Türkiye, yes. Warm humid air condenses inside your pipework as it cools, and that water rusts pipes, wrecks pneumatic cylinders and ruins paint finishes. A dryer is part of the installation, not an accessory.

The lowest pressure that still runs your equipment. Every extra bar costs roughly 7% more energy, permanently. Many plants supply 8.5 bar when nothing on site needs more than 6.5 at the tool.

A rotary screw machine maintained properly runs 40,000–60,000 hours before a major overhaul, which is fifteen years at one shift. A piston machine used within its duty cycle lasts a decade. Used continuously it often fails inside two years.

An oil-injected machine sprays oil into the compression chamber to seal and cool it, then separates most of it out again: leaving 1–3 mg/m³ in the air. An oil-free machine has no lubricant in the air path at all. If oil contamination would cost you a batch, you need oil-free. Otherwise oil-injected is cheaper to buy and run.

Allow one metre of clear access on the service side and enough ventilation to remove the heat, roughly 4,000 m³/h of cooling air per 30 kW installed. Under-ventilated rooms are the single most common cause of high-temperature trips in summer.

Yes, but size the generator for the starting current, not the running load. A star-delta start needs roughly twice the running kVA. A variable speed machine starts softly and needs far less, which often makes it the cheaper option overall on generator supply.

Air and oil filters plus an oil sample every 2,000 hours. Separator, oil change and cooler clean every 4,000. A full performance check and motor regrease every 8,000. We publish the full task list per interval so you can compare it against any other quotation.

Yes, and we prefer to. A week of logging plus a leak survey usually finds 20–30% of generated air escaping and a system running a bar or two higher than anything needs. Fixing that is cheaper than buying a machine, and we will say so.