LAB 07: Reciprocating Compressor

Prepared for:

Professor Caldwell
Smith 238 cmorrise@uncc.edu (704) 587-5083
9201 University City Blvd Charlotte, North Carolina 28223

Conducted by:

Will Lawrence
Adam Krigman
Matt Racher

TABLE OF CONTENTS

SUMMARY

RESULTS

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

The reciprocating compressor (1) is used as many types of power sources today. Since it is power driven by pressured air, it is safe to use in wet surroundings and places with a high risk of fire. We noticed that there was less loss of pressure when the shaft power and delivery pressures were low. The temperature levels linearly correlated with our shaft power but were very close. At higher speeds we noticed there were huge jumps in shaft power but pressure delivery remained the same. We noticed that volumetric efficiency decreased as pressure increased. This may have happened from the built up pressure having small mechanical leaks from the valve. We believed that the friction loss gave us our correct mechanical torque. With all our efficiencies calculated we see that the main loss was from mechanical efficiency. We also believe the one way valve has a small loss from the high pressure of the compressor. The compressor is an efficient machine when dealing with small things such as power tools, but in the grand scale of things, large reciprocating compressors would need to be highly maintained and may have too many factors of loss to be