Energy and LCC Optimised Design of Compressed Air Systems: A Mixed Integer Optimisation Approach with General Applicability

Compressed air systems account for much of the total energy use by European industries. Air compressors alone account for over 10% of UK industrial energy use (>;15,000 GWh). Many of these systems are not optimized to save energy and money, and to have more reliable compressed air power. We present here an integrated optimization solution for the design of such systems. The input to the design procedure is an audit of the air usage pattern and the user defined requirements of the compressed air system. A multi-objective optimiser proposes a design solution. It generates candidate system configurations with alternative equipment, minimises, on-the-fly, the energy use of these using a SIMULINK simulator, computes predicted lifecycle cost, and selects the configuration which meets the specifications and gives the lowest 10 year life-cycle cost.