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Typical PFD for Instrument Air Supply System
Many of the automated instruments in process industry are often operated using instrument air or pneumatic
signals. The instrument air is generally required to be available at 7-8 bar pressure. Atmospheric air supply is
filtered, compressed, dried and cooled to be used as instrument air.
Figure 1 Typical PFD for an
Instrument Air Supply System
Figure-1 depicts a typical process flow
diagram (PFD) for instrument air
supply system. As shown in figure-1,
instrument air supply system is
typically comprised of filters,
compressors, knock out drums,
aftercoolers, intercoolers and air
drying (dehumidifying) packages.
Air used for instrument air systems is
taken from the atmospheric air supply
and compressed to required pressure.
Any particulate matter is unacceptable
in the compressor, since it can cause
damage. Hence the air is filtered
before sending to compressors. Also,
care has to be taken to place the air
intake point out of any hazardous
areas to keep hydrocarbons from
entering the instrument air system.
Instrument air supply compressors are
typically two or more in numbers. It is
a good engineering practice to use
different drivers (electric motor, steam
turbine, diesel engine etc.) to drive
these different compressors. So that in
case of failure of one utility system (electricity for example), instrument air system can still be maintained
operational by running a compressor using the other utility (steam for example).
As discussed for typical centrifugal compressor process flow diagram (PFD) , these compressors are generally
accompanied by aftercoolers to maintain the compressor discharge temperature.
The atmospheric air being compressed is generally humid. At high pressure at compressor outlet, the moisture
content in the air tends to condense. The instrument air is required to be dry to a certain extent hence water
droplets being formed after cooling the air from compressor outlet are removed using a Knock Out Drums (KOD),
which is a two phase separator with demister pads and wire mesh.
Further drying of the compressed air can be carried out by sending the compressed air stream to an instrument
air dryer/filter package. A dryer and filter package generally uses two desiccant beds (2X100%) in parallel. At a
given time one desiccant bed absorbs the moisture from moist compressed air and sends the dried air to
instrument air system. The other bed is regenerated at this time by circulation of hot air to free the absorbed
moisture. After regeneration phase, this bed remains on standby and is used for drying when the first bed
becomes saturated with moisture.
Dried, cooled and compressed air is then sent to instrument air supply headers. There headers need to be
equipped with low pressure alarm and low low pressure trip over the instrument air system. Usually, such a trip
triggers shutdown of the whole production.