Research on Energy-Saving Operation of Screw Air Compressor

Abstract

Based on analysis of a screw air compressor volumetric efficiency under different discharge pressure conditions, this study establishes the mathematic model of the adiabatic compression power consumption. Under load/unload conditions, to change the offline pressure with step of 0.01 MPa, the power consumption floats up and down with the change of unloading and loading and then the screw compressor power consumption is simulated in MATLAB. The results shows that the optimal offline pressure exists at the given air consumption and meanwhile power consumption is minimal with the optimal offline pressure. It also reveals that the required optimal offline pressures will vary by air consumptions. Then, based on dynamic mechanical analysis for fluid motion in the pipe, considering that there is a causal relationship between pressure variation and gas flow variation, a method for measuring flow rate of one dimensional unsteady flow dynamically is proposed based on theory of linear approximation. In order to lower the online pressure and further reduce the energy consumption of screw air compressor, we propose a method is to calculate the rate of pressure drop and predict times for the discharge pressure dropping to the online pressure. And the further optimal control method of screw air compressor is given. It is correct and feasible, which proved by experiments.