Editorial

Earlier this month BEKO TECHNOLOGIES held a training day for Mattei Compressors. It was held at the BEKO offices in Bromsgrove and included a buffet lunch with live demonstrations of their oil free products.

The day started with an introduction and overview of BEKO TECHNOLOGIES. Next was an oil free presentation given by Matt Harrison UK Sales manager where he explained the advantages and disadvantages of the different methods of achieving oil free air, including the BEKOKAT catalytic converter and also the METPOINT OCV constant analyser used to measure Air Quality to ISO 8571.1.

BEKO TECHNOLOGIES service department can offer air quality tests to enable customers to know what the quality of the compressed air is that they are using. This can be in bodyshops, food packaging companies, automotive, pharmaceutical industry and many more.
From this BEKO TECHNOLOGIES can advise what, if necessary, the customer requires in the way of air treatment and filtration.
The BEKO Technologies air quality test, together with a written assessment report are tools that allow you to keep accurate records on your air quality.

BEKO TECHNOLOGIES has appointed Stewart Draper as Regional Sales Manager for BEKO’s comprehensive range of compressed air equipment to cover the East Midlands. As the key point of contact for customers, manufacturers and distributors, he will be responsible for promoting sales by determining the specific needs of customers and overseeing existing sales within his territory.

At the recent Air-Tech exhibition BEKO TECHNOLOGIES, a market leader in compressed air treatment challenged visitors to the show to test their knowledge of compressed air quality to win an IPAD. The challenge was to identify compressed air quality at different points of a circuit. The overall winner, selected at random from the correct answers was Andy Jones of Mattei Compressors Ltd. Martin Potter, General Manager for BEKO TECHNOLOGIES UK awarded Andy with his well-earned prize.

Having built-up a reputation for high performance, energy efficient products, Hi-line Industries Ltd now also confirm that prices for their range of air treatment products will be held unchanged for the 4th consecutive year.

Their product range includes adsorption, refrigerant, desiccant and membrane dryer technologies for general commercial and industrial applications. Specialised requirements for medical, dental and breathing-air operation are also covered with their Hi-Zorb point-of-use desiccant dryers incorporating both filtration and energy control technologies. Adsorption dryers in their range include the HBP-ZL heat regeneration units with zero air-loss

Martin Potter has joined BEKO TECHNOLOGIES to take up the role of General Manager. Martin has extensive sales and marketing management experience in the fields of pneumatics, drives and controls, transportation, process and automotive.  He has a strong track record of achieving growth by the development of strategies, processes and high performing teams. Recent positions include Sales and Marketing Director at Phoenix Contact for 5 years and National Field sales Manager at SMC for 13 years.

Martin has a BSc Hons degree from the University of Leicester in Business Administration and management. He is married to Diane and has 2 daughters Lucy and Rosie who are both keen competitive swimmers. Martin enjoys sports particularly mountain biking and running. He is currently building an AC Cobra in what limited spare time is available.

Virtually all manufacturing industry uses compressed air. There are some industries however where the quality of the compressed air is critical.

The chemical and process industry being one such sector. There are too many processes to mention but to name a few, agitation and aeration blending of liquids, process instrumentation, pneumatic conveying and operation of devices where a spark may be dangerous. These are all examples of the reasons to use high quality, clean dry, oil free air.

BEKO TECHNOLOGIES theme for the Airtech Exhibition 2014 will be “solutions capability”. The company specialises in compressed air, gas and condensate conditioning and there will be a working demonstration of some of the key products for monitoring and saving energy within a compressed air system. There will be a challenge to visitors to the stand to use the solutions technology and to test their knowledge of compressed air purity. There will be a lucky person who will receive an iPad 16GB Wi-Fi chosen from all those who are successful at the challenge.

BEKO TECHNOLOGIES have extended the product range significantly in the last few years notably by the addition of the EVERDRY range of “tailored” desiccant dryers, measurement technology with the flagship product METPOINT OCV being the best way to continuously monitor remaining oil vapour content. In the second quarter of 2014 a new product called METPOINT MMA will be launched. This product will monitor and record the limit values of O2, S O2, CO, Oxides of Nitrogen, H2O vapour and pressure in bars.

The uses of compressed air are pretty much universal from pumping up your car tyres to sophisticated control systems for industrial processes. In the medical sphere compressed air is used to operate simple mechanical devices such as drills and saws, ventilators and as a carrier gas in anaesthesia and inhaled medications. Compressed air at source is ambient air which has passed through a mechanical device(the compressor) which in industrial applications sometimes comes into contact with the lubricating oil. In more “quality” applications the compression chamber is usually dry of any lubricating medium. 

Compressors are responsible for 10% of all the power consumed in a mature industrial society like the UK and Ireland. Frequently 10% or more of this air will be wasted because of leakage caused by poor maintenance, bad design of air lines, acidic condensate attacking seals and joints just to name a few of the possibilities. Therefore it makes sense to do regular audits on the power consumed, flow, pressure, dew point and leakage as a starting point. Is this commonly done? Matthew Harrison, Regional Sales Manager at BEKO TECHNOLOGIES says, “No this type of extensive measurement is rare but smart companies are realising that you can’t know too much about what is happening within your compressed air network. You can avoid problems and be sure that you are operating to an efficiency that is acceptable if you regularly even better have a permanent output of key parameters within the system. Now that the BEKO Data Logger is available it is very easy for me and BEKO TECHNOLGIES colleagues to monitor up to 12 outputs per BDL installed which is plenty for the normal compressed air system.