Compressors: Selection and Sizing

Royce N. Brown, P. E. , RNB Engineering ,   Houston ,Texas

In the previous edition of this book, mention was made of the changes taking place at that time in the compressor-manufacturing world. Compressor manufactures were changing owners. In some instances, employee or ex-employees were using leveraged buyouts (LBO) to acquire the company. There were a limited number of mergers of what had been the traditional companies. I would never have imagined the changes that have taken place since that time. In the past several years, there has been an explosion of mergers, even mergers of previously merged companies. A look at the credits in the body of the book will show this trend. Many company names are no longer in existence because these firms were bought out and merged into the purchasing company’s existing organization and name. Others have attempted to keep the legacy companies in the name, which makes the new name read like a law firm. This combining and merging has some benefit for the shareholders because the duplication of resources is minimized. On directly competing products, the efforts can be combined to market only the most competitive product and drop any others from the market place. The impact of all this on the compressor user has yet to play out.