Energy conservation co-operative control mechanism based on gray prediction for structural air compressor

The structural air compressor has heavy power consumption during the course of operation, so the energy conservation control is one of the major challenges in the research of its control mechanism. In this paper, a co-operative control mechanism based on the gray prediction is proposed to control the air supply flow of the air compressor. The air supply flow of each air compressor is sent to the main gas tank, and dozens of pneumatic rock drills are driven by the high pressure gas of a main pipeline connected to the main gas tank. According to the real-time measurement and analysis of the pressure of the main gas tank, the controller predicts the next value of the pressure and dynamically regulates the working time of each air compressor. With the control mechanism, the pressure of the main gas tank is smooth and the total working time of the air compressors is reduced. The statistical results demonstrate that the presented control mechanism can effectively reduce about 22% energy consumption of the air compressor.

► The variation of the main gas tank's pressure is analyzed with gray prediction.
► The controller dynamically regulates the working time of each air compressor.
► Energy saving is realized by closing the unnecessary working air compressors.
► The cost of the controlling is reduced with the proposed control mechanism.