Does your process heating operation need a fast, non-contact, non-destructive method to capture both qualitative and quantitative information in order to avoid or reduce downtime? Of course you do. That's why you should consider the option of a thermal imaging camera to see through the flames.
As explained in "Process Heating" magazine.
A look at the industrial furnaces, heaters and boilers used in the chemical, petrochemical and general service industries shows that today's operational designs are as varied as the many applications. Some plants have only two or three heaters, while larger plants may have more than 50. Some heaters simply transport the product to the next stage of the reaction process when a predetermined temperature is reached, while others carry out reactions in the product as it travels through the piping.
Regardless of the application, accurate and cost-effective inspection of these processes involving heaters, furnaces or boilers present unique and unique challenges. Increasingly, industrial predictive maintenance (PdM) programs and third-party inspection companies are turning to thermal cameras equipped with a spectral broadband filter specifically designed to see through flames at temperatures ranging from -40 to 816 °C (-40 to 1500 °F) or more.
Infrared locates the coke and allows temperature validation
Metal piping temperatures are especially critical in distillation furnace operations. When operating a furnace with a metal pipe temperature close to the maximum allowable temperature, changes of less than 111 °C (200 °F) can significantly reduce pipe life from 100,000 hours to only a few hundred hours.
In distillation furnaces, one of the primary considerations is to determine carbon buildup or coke formation. Areas with coke buildup prevent the product from evenly absorbing heat from the pipe, which can lead to high furnace burn rates. In some cases, this overheating can cause the design values of the metal pipe to be exceeded, which, coupled with the pressure inside a plugged pipe, can lead to a rupture and cause a leak.