What happened: Within three days of running at normal shop load, the compressor was triggering its high-temperature shutdown during afternoon peak hours. The unit was shutting itself down at around 2:30 PM, precisely when the painters were busiest. The temperature sensor inside the acoustic enclosure was reading 48°C — well above the 40°C ambient limit specified in the manufacturer’s documentation.
Why it happened: We had placed the compressor in a dedicated room that had previously housed the two piston units. The room was approximately 12 square metres with one small louvred vent near the ceiling. The old piston compressors had run hot and intermittently, so the room’s limited ventilation had been adequate for them. A rotary screw compressor running at 100% duty cycle is a fundamentally different thermal load. At full operation, a 15 kW compressor rejects approximately 14 kW of heat into its surroundings — nearly continuously. The small louvred vent was nowhere near sufficient to remove that heat.
