Ask any maintenance engineer about his holiday plans and he is more than likely to tell you when he can’t go on holiday than when he can. This is especially true if the company has an annual shutdown period where essential planned maintenance is carried out.
However, although it may be the busiest two weeks of his entire year, it’s not necessarily a stressful time. The clue for this scenario lies in the word ‘planned’. During the annual shutdown, replacement components are in stock and awaiting assembly, shift patterns have been arranged and everyone involved works towards the goal of ensuring a smooth restart of operations at the end of the shutdown.
The converse to planned maintenance is of course unplanned maintenance. This is where stress levels really do rise! Hardly surprising when as a maintenance department, you have the plant manager screaming about lost production and the sales team, complaining about delayed orders and frustrated customers.
It’s hardly surprising that stress levels run high. A recent report conducted by Siemens found that unscheduled downtime costs Fortune Global 500 companies over 1.5 trillion dollars per year. Such a huge sum represents a staggering 11% of their combined revenue.
But it is not just unscheduled downtime and catastrophic failures that have a negative impact on company finances. In recent years, geopolitical events have given rise to escalating energy costs the likes of which we have never seen before.
As a result, vast amounts of time have been devoted to improving efficiencies in order to use less energy during the production process. A component that finds itself in pretty much all plants and factories is compressed air.
In terms of a component it can often be overlooked as being incidental or secondary compared to main raw materials used during production, however the cost of generating compressed air has increased significantly in recent years in line with escalating energy costs.
All this means that every air leak in a compressed system is costing your company more money than ever before. One small leak in an air-line may not seem like a significant drain on finances but stop and consider the number of reduction and elbow joints on a complex centralised pneumatic system and the propensity for leaks and associated pressure loss increases significantly.
One leading compressor manufacturer reports that in some plants, 80% of air is lost through system leaks. A major issue that complicates detection is that many of the air lines are situated in elevated areas of a factory ensuring they don’t cause obstructions to manufacturing and personnel. As such, numerous small leaks can go undetected for months and even years.
But the financial impact of gas leaks is not the only factor that has to be considered. Many gases used in manufacturing and processing can have an adverse effect on human health. A clear example of this is carbon dioxide, a gas widely used in the food and beverage industry.
Carbon dioxide is an odourless, colourless gas and is much heavier than air. If leaks of this gas go undetected for long periods there is the potential for the gas to build up at ground level and prove fatal to operators in the vicinity. Needless to say, other harmful and flammable gases can cause major hazards even at low concentrations.
FLIR Teledyne, formed in 1978 is a world leader in the development and marketing of thermal and acoustic imaging cameras. Since then, they have supplied almost every industry around the world with market leading cameras and instruments representing the latest technology.
Acoustic imaging cameras work on the principle that any leak, however small, emits a sound.
These sounds, often inaudible to the human ear, can be detected using FLIR’s advanced acoustic imaging cameras. In 2021 FLIR launched the highly successful Si124; the nomenclature conveys the fact that the camera contains 124 highly sensitive microphones capable of detecting and accurately locating the slightest sound from a leaking system.
Building on the success of this camera FLIR are pleased to announce the launch of the new Si2-LD acoustic imaging camera. This second generation camera has improved microphones now capable of detecting sounds over an extremely wide frequency range, namely 2 – 130 kHz.
As mentioned above, many air lines are situated in elevated, hard to reach places. This is no problem for the FLIR Si2-LD acoustic imaging camera. At 10 metres the acoustic camera can detect gas leaks as small as 0.05 litres per minute. At a distance of 2.5 metres the camera is capable of detecting minute leaks down to 0.0032 litres per minute.
Difficult to reach areas of a production plant are often dark or dimply lit. For this reason, the FLIR Si2 comes complete with two extremely powerful LED lights that illuminate the area, allowing specific gas lines to be identified and analysed.
Images captured by the 12-megapixel camera are displayed on a new high definition five inch 1280 x 720 screen which is brighter and sharper than its predecessor. The 8x zoom feature also allows more distant problem areas to be brought into focus.
Identifying the leak is only part of the equation. The handheld FLIR Si2 has built in software that calculates the financial impact of the detected gas or air leak. Termed Industrial Gas Quantification, the incorporated software can calculate losses for a variety of gaseous systems including ammonia, helium, hydrogen, argon, methane, natural gas, compressed air and of course carbon dioxide.
This unique software coupled with the new advanced features of the FLIR Si2-LD provide valuable information regarding gas leaks enabling the maintenance engineer to perform remedial action that has an immediate and lasting effect on the company’s bottom line.
The camera described above is specifically designed for gas and air leak detection, namely the Si2-LD. However, FLIR Teledyne have introduced other variants of the Si2 acoustic camera such as the Si2-PD which is specifically designed to detect partial discharge on electrical systems.
For more information on the new exciting Si-2 range of acoustic cameras from FLIR Teledyne please contact your local FLIR agent or distributor, here
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