Analysis of Air Compressor in Wood-based Panel Production Line

Air Compressor in Wood-based Panel Production Line is an important power source, which is used to drive a variety of wind tools and wind machinery, such as wind picks, wind drills, pneumatic wrenches, wind grinding wheels, sandblasting, pneumatic cranes, control instrumentation and automation devices, conveying powdered materials, and so on. Compressed air has many advantages over other sources of energy, such as it is clearer and more transparent, and it is easier to transport. Secondly, it is not afraid of overloading, has no harmful properties, and there is no danger of fire, and it can work in many unfavorable environments, etc., so it is widely used in the fields of electric power, power automobiles, pulse blowing, and water conservancy storage, etc.

As the level of production automaticity in wood-based panel manufacturers has increased over the past 20 years, the use of compressed air has become more and more widespread. In order to save the cost of the enterprise, our company analyzed the compressed air consumption of particleboard and fiberboard production line in 20 years, and reasonably proposed the number of air compressors and the exhaust volume, so as not to cause waste of resources.

1. Analysis of Air Compressor in Wood-based Panel Production Line and Selection of Air Compressor for Particle Board Production Line

1.1 Statistics of Air Consumption for Particle Boards

Construct 10 particleboard production lines with different production scales in cities A, B and C, and take the data in the period of 2003-2022 as the object of study, with annual production scales ranging from 80,000 m3 to 700,000 m3, which makes this study representative in terms of regions, years and scales.

1.2 Analysis and Discussion

Divided by the standard of annual production scale, it can be divided into 3 grades, which are below 150,000m³, 150,000~300,000m³ and above 300,000m³ respectively. As shown in Table 1, for production lines with a production scale of more than 300,000 m³, it is common to choose 4 PM VSD screw air compressors (3 with 1 standby), with a single exhaust volume of 30~40m³/min. For production lines with a scale of 150,000~300,000m³, it is usually prepared with 3 sets of air compressors (2 with 1 standby), with a single exhaust capacity of 15~20m³/min. For production lines with a production scale of less than 150,000m³, it can use two air compressors (one for use and one for standby), with a single exhaust volume of 10~15m³/min.

2. Analysis of Air Compressor in Wood-based Panel Production Line

2.1 Statistics of Fiberboard Air Consumption

Build 11 fiberboard production lines with different production scales in cities A, B, C, D and E, and take the data in the period of 2004-2020 as the object of study, with annual production scales ranging from 90,000 to 600,000 m³, which makes this study of special significance in terms of regions, years and scales.

2.2 Analasis and Discussion

We divide it according to the annual production scale, and it can be divided into 4 grades, which are below 100,000m³, 100,000~200,000m³, 200,000~300,000m³, and more than 300,000m³ respectively. As shown in Table 2, for production lines with a production scale of more than 300,000 m³, it is generally chosen to have 5 permanent magnet  frequency conversion screw air compressors (4 with 1 standby), with a single exhaust capacity of 30 m³/min. For the production line with a scale of 200,000~300,000m³, it is usual to use 4 sets of air compressors (3 with 1 standby) with a single exhaust capacity of 15~20m³/min. For the production line with a production scale of 100,000~200,000m³ , we can prepare 3 sets of air compressors (2 with 1 standby) with a single exhaust of 20m³/min. For the production line with a production scale of less than 100,000m³, we will place 2 sets of air compressors (1 with 1 standby) with a single exhaust of 25 m³/min in most cases.

3. Compressed Air Location

Taking the production process (section) as a criterion, we can divide the air-using location of compressed air into 8 sections, which are: drying, post-processing and stacking, paving and hot pressing, core surface silo (with washing hot grinding), sanding and sawing, glue mixing, thermal center, plant dust collector. Select two particleboard production lines and two fiberboard production lines, which are relatively common in the current production scale, respectively, and make a side-by-side comparison of the gas consumption of each gas-using position, details of which are shown in Table 3.

Research has revealed that:

• (1) From the proportion of air consumption it can be analyzed that the amount of compressed air in the main workshop accounts for 50% to 60%, and the amount of compressed air outside the main workshop accounts for 40% to 50%.

• (2) from the production section or gas equipment we can get the following results: gas consumption of the dust collector is generally 15~20m³/min. Drying, laying hot pressing, post-processing and stacking gas consumption are generally in the range of 10~12 m³/min. Sanding section has a larger amount of consumption, which is usually in the range of 8~10m³/min.

4. Principles for Selecting Other Parameters of Air Compressor in Wood

4.1 Principles for Selecting Pressure

If the pressure needs to be the same or similar at each point of use, compressed air of the same pressure shall be supplied uniformly. If the pressure varies from one point of use to another or if a large difference is required between the pressures of the various points of use, the compressor should provide the highest pressure and depressurize inside the production site or in the vicinity of the equipment.

4.2 Principles of Drying Device Selection

Compressed air is mainly used for can be divided into instrumentation air and blowing air, the main difference between the two is that instrumentation gas requires that the gas source should not contain water, otherwise it may cause some damage to the precision instrumentation and bring economic losses to the enterprise. The water content in the air is expressed by the dew point, the dew point of the dry air after purification, should be 10 ℃ lower than the lowest ambient temperature of the local (season), the dust particle size should be less than 3 μm, the amount of dust can not be greater than 1mg/ m³, the amount of oil can not be more than 0.001%.

Because of the separate settings of the instrument gas and purge gas systems, we have to take gas from the same gas system. Therefore, at present, in the selection of air compressor supporting equipment for man-made board production line, in summary, taking the baseline that all the air used needs to be dried, that is, by matching the same flow rate as the air compressor to configure the dryer, we can design a piping network that meets the requirements.

5. Conclusion

In the future Air Compressor in Wood-based Panel Production Line design or air compressor selection, the total amount of air used in particleboard or fiberboard production line can refer to Part 1 or Part 2 of this article, while the amount of air used in different production processes (sections) can be compared with Part 3. In recent years, particleboard production lines usually use 4 (3 with 1 standby) or 3 (2 with 1 standby) air compressors, and fiberboard production lines in most cases prepare 5 (4 with 1 standby) or 4 (3 with 1 standby) screw air compressors. In terms of the total amount of gas used and the amount of gas used in each section, we can all grasp the deviation, so it should not be too different from the empirical value.