Most common PET bottle blowing problems

This is especially true because the demands on PET air compressors are so high and so much depends on them to deliver quality air.

Let’s look at some PET bottle blowing problems related to compressed air equipment and how they can be overcome. 

Keeping oil out of your compressed air system and PET bottles is a top priority and an important way to ensure that there are no PET bottle blowing defects.

If this type of contamination does happen, you may have to shut down your production until the problem is fixed. And then you still have to clean up the contamination. All of which makes oil contamination a very risky and costly issue. Minimizing the threat of oil contamination will help ensure that your equipment lasts longer, safeguards production processes and protects your end products.

How do you do this? It all starts with using an oil-free compressor instead of an oil-injected or oil-lubricated model. That eliminates the most important source of oil contamination from the very beginning. Choose an oil-free compressor, certified to produce Class 0 air that contains no traces of oil.

Any disruptions to the production process, such as those caused by an overheating compressor, is expensive. That is why trying to reduce costs by investing in sub-optimal equipment is always going to backfire. In the end, you always end up paying more.

This is illustrated by one of the most common PET air compressor problems: overheating.

What you need is a compressor designed to meet the rigorous demands of a PET bottling plant environment. Choose PET bottle boosters featuring 4-stage compression. This allows for a more gradual compression with a lower compression ratio increase during low load.

In combination with Variable Speed Drive low-pressure compressors, meaning systems can reliably handle a lower air demand. 3-stage air compressor boosters, on the other hand, tend to overheat, especially at a lower flow, as the compression ratio increases too much for the interconnected pistons to handle. Only 4-stage compression technology can ensure 24/7 operation without performance and reliability issues. 

A steady flow of quality air is needed to be able to produce PET bottles in seconds. Because the demands on the compressed air system are so intense, it is crucial to only work with quality components. That begins with the compressor itself, but also includes your piping. First, your compressor must be correctly sized. An undersized compressor will not provide the required flow.

But compressor engineering also plays a role in avoiding PET bottle blowing problems. Many 3-stage piston compressors experience flow losses over time. 4-stage PET systems are designed to ensure compressed air flow consistency and dependability.

As for piping, you want to prevent leaks as much as possible and have a system in place to detect them right away. Even better than preventing leaks is eliminating the possibility of them developing. By keeping the high-pressure piping system as small as possible, you can automatically reduce the related flow issues. This can be achieved with a low-noise, low-vibration air compressor/booster combination with booster installed at the point of use.

Compressor vibration poses a serious threat to the production of PET bottles. For example, excessive vibration can lead to pipes breaking and shutting down production. To prevent this from happening, it is important to offer the proper stabilization. Select boosters, which have a specially developed frame with a concrete base, which means they don’t vibrate. They don’t need to be bolted down, and they do not require heavy foundations. 

Your production plant can only produce a high volume of PET bottles if it runs as much as possible. However, 3-stage high-pressure air compressors typically require cool-down periods, especially when running in 50% load. If you want to keep going around the clock, you need to invest in a 4-stage Variable Speed Drive unit that can run continuously without needing breaks to cool down.

Compressor noise can be a serious problem in production environments. If the compressor is too loud, it has to be installed in a compressor or utility room, away from the point of use to meet hearing protection standards. That, however, adds to even more installation costs and leads to a pressure drop that requires compressors to use much more energy. In addition, you then have to figure out how to cool the air compressor room.

However, by investing in quiet compressors and boosters, for example those with a sound-protecting canopy, a frame and cylinder set-up to minimize vibrations, you can address all of these challenges at once. 

The right equipment, sound insulation and proper ventilation are some of the keys to protecting your compressor room from excessive noise and heat, but is not always needed.

Here is an important tip: Compressing air generates a lot of heat. Instead of just venting it (to ensure the compressor room doesn’t get too hot), you should look into recovering it to reduce your energy consumption and your environmental footprint. If done right, you can recover up to 90% of this waste heat and make use of it elsewhere.

A great option is choosing a hybrid plant set-up in which the low- or medium-pressure compressor is placed in the compressor room and a high-pressure booster is installed at the point of use.