We have often linked readers of our blog and our Facebook page to articles from around the world about compressed air issues in the various industries that utilize it. It’s all information that should be shared (and we appreciate the article recommendations you share with us too). Today, we have a recommended reading and a PDF copy of the article for you.

“Oil Exploration in the Food and Beverage Industry,” published in a Sustainable Manufacturing section of Compressed Air Best Practices, addresses the lack of “hard and fast” rules in compressed air quality that can apply across the industry’s many different uses of compressed air. Writer Chris Kelsey notes that the pharmaceutical industry’s history of working in the same “gray” zone in regards to testing, how strictly to apply a standard that you might be using only as a general guide, and so forth can help the food and beverage industry find the right compressed air quality levels for more efficient, safe operations and products.

He goes on to say that the bar for testing is sometimes set too high, that some facilities simply take the most stringent standard they find and attempt to apply it outright to their operations even though that standard may not have been developed with the intricacies of their type of facility and operation in mind.

ISO 8573-1, even at its lowest levels in oil and particulate control, is still far higher than most food and beverage facilities generally need, Kelsey writes.

Additional pieces of the article offer notes on the tricky issue of identifying where oil may be getting into a system (and how to find it) and the advantages of having third-party support for compressed air testing and analysis.

Key article sources include Mark Fenstermaker, Qualification Services Division Manager of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania-based Micro-Clean, Inc., and Dr. Ed Golla, TRI Air Testing’s Laboratory Director.

Read a copy of the article here (PDF) and subscribe to Compressed Air Best Practices via the built-in link in the PDF.