The Problem
Each year, US$6.5 trillion is spent globally making electricity.
Approximately 10% of this electricity, worth €650 billion, is used to manufacture compressed air. Compressed air is used in some capacity in almost 76% of manufacturing worldwide. It is estimated that 40% of all compressed air used in industry is unavoidably wasted through leakage, blow-off, or more especially…idle time. This equates to a global cost of making such waste of approximately $260 billion annually (World Energy Expenditure, Nathalie Desbrosses).
Wastage through leakage, blow-off and idle- time has been accepted for decades, largely because of the absence of an efficient solution. Although very expensive to produce, it is normal practice in a manufacturing facility for waste compressed air to be used to clean work benches, dry paint or even heat sections of the working area. Most factories operate a centrifugal compressor pushing compressed air at 8 to 10 Bar through a house line. Individual manufacturing cells situated along the house line draw their compressed air from it, often feeding it into a secondary compressor to increase the bar pressure further before using it. If none of the manufacturing cells are calling for air, the house compressor can ramp down but rarely switch off as the compressor manufactures only allow a maximum of 6 shut down per hour. The compressor continues to generate, then dump the compressed air it has generated. It is not unusual to have house compressors run for 10 minutes without supplying air to the manufacturing cells. During this time, the inlet valve remains open enough to generate bar sump pressure, whose only function is to force the oil through the compression chamber to lubricate the machine. This bar pressure is then dumped to atmosphere through the blow down valve.
The Solution
Static Hydro Energy intends to harvest this huge and, heretofore wasted resource, and use it to generate electricity. This electricity can then be used to lower power bills at the factory, or it can be sold directly to the grid. Our technology provides a simple, yet lucrative solution to a decades old problem, delivering considerable financial returns in an era of rapidly increasing electricity costs.
Other Possible Applications
Many Solar Farms, especially in geographical regions of high sunshine,, have a serious overcapacity of solar power. Each day, Megawatts of electricity are either burned off or shunted to other areas free of charge. If this excess of electricity was, instead of being dumped or shunted, used to make compressed air during peak solar times, the compressed air could then be used to power CAPO machines at night, giving the solar farms 24- hour capacity.
The Pharmaceutical Industry currently spends millions of dollars each year on electricity to scrub the poisonous waste gasses their manufacturing processes generate, before they are released to the atmosphere. As these gasses are under pressure, many of them considerable pressure, CAPO technology could harvest this pressure from the waste gases and use it to generate electricity. This electricity could then be used to power the scrubbers cleaning the waste gas, saving the industry huge sums of money.
CAPO’s unique selling point is it’s ability to generate electricity using very low Bar pressure. In fact, the technology can operate at 1.8 Bar. Although a detailed study has not taken place, the capacity to generate electricity at such low Bar should place the technology in a unique position to utilize the vast amount of low Bar waste compressed air generated by Data Centres.
The Natural Gas industry is currently experiencing huge difficulty with environmental protection agencies regarding their emissions and burn-off. Presently, when transmission lines are transferring gas to the distribution lines at the pressure gate stations, the pressure must first be reduced, often from 100 bar to 8 bar. Currently, the only way to do this is by venting or burning the gas to drop the pressure. CAPO technology could be used to extract the pressure from the gas to generate electricity before returning the gas at reduced pressure to the distribution system.