- Compressed air
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Compressed air is air which is kept under a certain pressure, usually greater than that of the atmosphere. In Europe, 10 percent of all electricity used by industry is used to produce compressed air, amounting to 80 terawatt hours consumption per year.[1][2]
Contents
Uses
Compressed air is regarded as the fourth utility, after electricity, natural gas and water. However, compressed air is more expensive than the other three utilities when evaluated on a per unit energy delivered basis.[3]
Compressed air can be used in or for:
- pneumatics, the use of pressurized gases to do work. See compressed air energy storage.
- vehicular transportation using a compressed air vehicle
- energy storage
- scuba diving, for breathing and to inflate buoyancy devices. See also: Breathing gas
- cooling using a vortex tube.
- gas dusters for cleaning electronic components that cannot be cleaned with water.
- railway braking systems
- road vehicle braking systems
- Diesel engine cranking
- paintball ammunition propulsion
- airsoft ammunition propulsion
- air tools
- cleaning electronic components and assemblies
See also
- Air dryer
- Cabin pressurization
- Gas compressor
- Cabin compressor
Notes
- ^ Paineilma hukkaa 15 hiilivoimalan tuotannon (Finnish)
- ^ http://isi.fraunhofer.de/isi-de/publ/download/isi04p20/compressed-air-benchmarking.pdf "Compressed Air System Audits and Benchmarking Results from the German Compressed Air Campaign "Druckluft effizient" "
- ^ Yuan, C., Zhang, T., Rangarajan, A., Dornfeld, D., Ziemba, B., and Whitbeck, R. “A Decision-based Analysis of Compressed Air Usage Patterns in Automotive Manufacturing”, Journal of Manufacturing Systems, 25 (4), 2006, pp.293-300
External links
Categories:- Breathing gases
- Respiration
- Gas technologies
- Energy storage
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