Air blower installation: a checklist
When it comes to integrating your air blowers on site, there are a few ways to make your mechanical and electrical installation, and the setup of your control system a bit easier.
Mechanical installation
Installing your blowers in the right spot requires some preparation. Even before you purchase your blower, there are some things to consider.
During the buying process, when determining the specifications:
- How many blowers do you need for each aeration tank? What about a backup blower? Do you want them integrated into individual tanks or use a shared backup unit for multiple tanks?
- Do you have a dedicated blower room? Or will you install the blower outdoors? In that case, do you need to provide some sort of protection from the elements? Keep in mind that some blowers come with canopies or other protective housings. That makes the air blower installation much simpler.
- Are you setting up the blower in a location where it is subject to noise standards? Then you may need to install a silencer or construct a sound enclosure over the blower.
- What about inlet filters? They play an important role to protect your blower, diffusers & aeration process
Tip: If you are working with many different blowers, a central controller offers great benefits.
Getting your blower ready for operation:
- Blowers are heavy, so you need to be able to get them to the right place. Make sure to check whether you need special lifting devices and whether the blower has forklift slots to facilitate its transportation.
- Are all required valves installed (check valve, isolation valve, switching valve in case of a backup blower)?
- When you’re dealing with high discharge temperatures, you might want to consider installing a high-quality compensator. This will ensure you’ll have a smooth, flexible, and reliable connection from the blower to the pipe.
- Should your hot outlet piping be isolated?
- You may want to install inlet ducting to provide fresh air to the process side of the blowers.
- For your warm outlet air, do you need outlet ducting to make sure the heat in the compressor room dissipated?
- You have to determine whether there is one common header pipe for different tanks or whether each tank has its own pipe. Make sure to adjust your central control to the mechanical layout. Do all blowers feed into a central header pipe for different tanks, or are different tanks supplied by dedicated blowers?
Tip: You can save energy by recovering the hot air and using it elsewhere.
Electrical installation
Then there is the electrical connection of your blower. Here are some of the things you should keep in mind.
- In the case of a variable speed operation, you have to figure out if you want an internal or external frequency converter. In the case of the former, the blower comes equipped with an integrated converter. If you choose the latter, you may need to install the converter at a remote location in a separate electrical cabinet.
- If you choose high-speed blowers, do you need to install extra harmonic filters, or do they come with the blower?
- Make sure you have all relevant communication cables between the blower and your control room.
Some blowers only allow basic commands like on/off and offer limited or no feedback. Using a MODBUS/CAN communication, these are very easy to integrate.
- Don’t forget to install all necessary fuses as well as the main switch.
- You also have to think about your power supply. Do you want to use one shared power supply or a separate one for the main motor and the auxiliaries?
Plug & play solutions answer many of these questions and save precious installation time.
Tip: An integrated converter provides the widest turndown range for your blower in the most reliable way
Maintaining control
Now you are almost ready to use your new blower. Did you decide to handle all aspects of the air blower installation yourself? Then you will probably have spent a good deal of time on setting it up. But don’t worry, you are almost done.
Once the blower is physically connected, you should integrate its controls into your system. This allows you to better monitor and control its performance. And, if you are using a central controller, you can much more easily get the most out of all of your blowers. For example, you can prioritize things like efficiency or reliability.
- If you are choosing a central master control, you have to figure out who will program it. This requires specialist knowledge. That means if you do not have somebody on staff who can handle this integration, you need to find an outside expert.
- Do you regulate in an on/off mode based on lower & upper DO limitations? Or do you go for a more advanced continuous regulation based on the DO target value? Or do you want to include even more process parameters?
- How do you make sure your blower control follows the process variations during the day and year?
Blower commissioning – a tricky process
Once you have completed all of these preliminary set-up tasks, you are ready to commission the blower. This involves much more than flipping a switch and watching the blower deliver air.
Is it sending the correct amount of air to the right aeration zone as intended? Are your blowers providing air with the right pressure to ensure that the diffusers are working at an optimal level? Is the blower set up to adapt automatically to changing water levels in the tank? Will your assist blower jump in automatically once a higher flow is needed? If there is a shutdown of the main blower, will the backup unit jump in automatically?
During the commissioning of the blowers, a compressed air service technician can help you check the integration into your process to make sure your blowers are off to a great start.
