| | APRIL 20228VANTAGE POINTTHE ROLE OF PURE COMPRESSED AIR IN MODERN MANUFACTURING PROCESSESBy K S Sudhakaran, Chairman & Managing Director, SANPAR Industries IndiaT echnology and technology utilisation are the key drivers of the manufacturing innovation and pro-ductivity enhancement, pushing the substantial and rapid transformation the business models and market structures. Apart from the advanced materials and digi-talisation in manufacturing,automation and robotics play a key role modern manufacturing processes to make the business model competitive which is the need of the hour in this century to achieve sustainable growth. While we talk about automation, industry relentless-ly rely on pneumatically operated machines because of the better productivity, safety in handling, cost effective and the reliability of the automation processes. Efforts by the Research and Development are on devising inno-vative manufacturing and production machineries which could function flawlessly and continuously for all the three shifts with minimum manpower for machine operation and supervision.While the market demands the most competitive prod-ucts along with reliability, the manufacturing processes looks for cost effective automation which in turn depend on the fourth utility called Compressed air.Compressed air is an important medium for transfer of energy in industrial processes to operate pneumatic cyl-inders for automation, atomise paint, to power the power tools, air hammers and air bearings. It is not for no reason that compressed air is known as the fourth utility: the purity of compressed air is so vital that the eventual quality of the product mostly depends on clean and dryness of the air. No processes can afford to have moisture either in the air cylinders or in the painting guns so much so that in the manufacturing parleys mois-ture is treated as a menace. Compressed air is vital source of energy in the pharmaceutical and food industries where the quality of the end product depends on the purity of the air as Compressed air comeincontact with the end product like antibiotics and milk during pasteurisation. WHAT IS COMPRESSED AIR QUALITY STANDARD ISO 8573.1: 2010Compressed air could be generated with inexpensive pro-cessbut it would turn out to be the most expensive one if impurities like heat, dust, oil and moisture are not complet-ed eliminated. Certain processes in pharmaceuticals need bacteria free air and Ventilators call for virus free air too!Compressed air Quality Standard ISO 8573.1: 2010, a group of international standards stipulating the purity and quality of Compressed air provide guidelines for the com-pressed air that could be tolerated in applications in the industrial use. This standard was reviewed and confirmed in 2017 and this version is current and holds good. Even the smallest possible risk of contamination can impair pro-cesses such as material handling, process air and product drying, control valves and cylinders and other tools. These adverse effects can often only be resolved at significant expense directly affecting the profitability.HOW TO ACHIEVE ABSOLUTE FILTRATION OF DUST & OILDevelopment of technology in the generation of Com-pressed air has been an ongoing activity and so is the in-novation in the methods of treating compressed air. New materials and methods were devised in filtering and drying compressed air since 1970s making the process
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