Compressed air 1

http://airprofil.com/com2012/index.php/fr/

 COMPRESSED AIR 1

Hi! I am François BOUTEILLE from France. I am the owner and the manager of a small engineering firm specialized in measurements of flow. My company is EAC, this means in French Etudes Air Comprimé or Compressed Air Studies. We also have a website called airprofil.com and a channel on youtube called Airprofil.

This is airprofil in French. “Profil”, not “profile”, we do not have “e” at the end, so don’t mistake. Profil means, it is used in the sens in French, probably the same as Profile in English, of the measurement of the variation of some flow, cubic meter per hour for example, in a factory during possibly one day.

This is what we have been doing for compressed air, for steam, it’s rather tons per hour, for electricity, we may have kilowatts, for ice water.  What we measure exactly is the consumption profile of most energies and fluids in the industry.

So today, we are in September, the 4th of September and I will try to start shooting some videos which are already made in French, it was much easier for me and we are going to explain how we measure these profiles, how we make useful measurements on compressed air and other fluids, how we interpret these the measurements results, how we use that for some goals which you may define, such as saving energy or sizing compressors, sizing refrigeration units, boilers, maybe sizing a contract for buying compressed air or steam or ice water.

These is the things that we do in France since 1998, quite a while. I worked in this domain before.

What I will try to explain today is, well, we want to make courses that explain what we do a bit in the way which has become so usual today, with people like Standford University and like MIT which are very interesting courses. and I will When I saw these courses a few years ago, I decided that some time we will try to do the same, and be a bit as interesting and generous as these Americans who have invented these MOOCs, you know, Massive Open Online Courses. And I said that it was a pity that it was not a French man that had this idea.

And we wanted to make some such courses, and I said to my English friend, that I will help him maybe a bit to run these Massive Open Online « Curses » and that I wanted to put these “curses” on the internet.

“Curse” and “course” are very closed words for French people, you know, not at all the same meaning for you.

So if I make such mistakes, please forgive me, I will try to be as clear as possible by writing on the paper as I speak so that you have chances to understand something which may be interesting because it’s original.

We have developed with time a methodology which is quite different from what is used in most countries. We worked with Canadian people, we worked in Italy, sometimes in England, we have been in Germany once or twice, and we see that the way we work is a bit different and may be interesting for people all over the world.

So before I start to speak of technical matters, I will make some steps which come from a methodology, of teaching and preparing, which I think is useful, and I will give you examples and the origin, more explanation about that later.

We shall use a first point, which is very important so we put two “P”s.
This is to remember that it’s: “training for adults”.

The fact that we train adults is something that will make the way of presenting the course quiet different from what we would do for young people, for children. The adults want to choose, they want to choose the way they will progress, study this and maybe not study that. Or study this and then study that and then turn back to the first thing. So I think that Youtube is very convenient for adults. Maybe it’s not so systematic, methodical as teaching for young people at the university, but the fact that we can choose is something important for us.
 

The second point, it has to be useful, useful knowledge. I think that adults prefer to get really something concrete and precise out of what they study otherwise why loose time.

So this will be my first point, to make a training which is fit for adults, and adults who also are sometimes very good specialists of a matter, adults and specialists.

Usually, even if this course will be beneficial for beginners, very often the people who contact us are very good specialists of compressed air, steam, ice water, and other fluids ans so we have to think about that.

The second point, the second step is PR1, I shall explain that later, which I try to…we use writing and speaking at the same time and handwriting, because it has been explained by MIT, in one of their courses, that people learn better when they write, so you should write also.

And personally, I know that PowerPoint, when I see on videos something which is like an Excel or a PowerPoint, I learn nothing, I cannot concentrate on what is taught.
So I will use this method which is: Being clear, writing and speaking, speaking what I write.

So it’s a bit slow but it should be more efficient, especially because I don’t speak good English.
I would also prepare the course a bit more than I would in French, but I will try not to give the feeling that I read something.

The second point, PR2, the second Prelude is a wish, a wish that we cooperate with people. It is clear but we are a commercial enterprise and we wish to cooperate with some people which we can work with.

And I would say that the way we work is very original and a bit, maybe, unusual, we do not like reports of energy audits, which have only financial content: not only money.

It is surprising that people who make audits in England for instance, we read quiet a few of them, very often they speak of money at the beginning of the report, in the middle of the report and also in the annexes, at the end of the report. Very often we do no see very precisely anything like giving information, technical information and discussing it.

And very often, the reason why it is so, is that they speak maybe with buyers, who themselves would like to decide if they buy or not, and if they can have guarantees of some certainty of making some profit. We think that the way of making savings, of saving energy and saving money is not always concentrating on money, results or promises, especially when the report is not independent.

We want to be independent from the people, very respectable people who sell compressors, sell boilers, refrigeration units, and energy. We work with all them but we are independent engineers.

So this is the content, the introduction to the presentation of our society and our teaching project.

We shall call that “Presentation 1” and as we want to keep short pieces of information, we will stop this one now, and start with more technical aspect on the next presentation. Thank you.