Just like electricity, natural gas, and water, compressed air represents a critical resource in a broad array of industrial environments and countless applications—everything from familiar applications like vaporizing paint in a body shop to more technically advanced ones like lithography processes in semiconductor fabrication. However, simply preventing leaks in a compressed air system to maintain the required level of pressure is far from sufficient.
Just as with many other critical resources, facility managers must take steps to ensure the quality of the compressed air consumed in their operations to avoid substandard product quality; unplanned downtime and loss of production; equipment damage; and the potential for danger to employees and the facility itself.