Energy Savings in Pneumatically Driven Plants

Methods for improving the energy efficiency in pneumatics typically aim at optimizing single cylinder drives—either by an enhanced design or by advanced control strategies. However, both approaches exhibit two major limitations in practice: the measures rely on a profound and detailed system knowledge—being hardly scalable to production plants—and the methods cannot exploit the potential arising from the operation of several drives in a compound. In this article, we give the conception, derivation, and implementation of three energy saving measures in pneumatically driven plants avoiding those restrictions. The considered measures include two structural means: a cascaded concept for exploiting the expansion potential of compressed air, and an adaptive control pattern. Conclusively, the methods are validated at a demonstrator yielding compressed air savings of up to 65% by measurements.