Updating thermal imaging saves energy costs

The Climate Change Levy is focussing the attention of many companies on improving plant efficiency to reduce energy costs. Thermal imaging cameras help identify hotspots and so save energy.

The Climate Change Levy is focussing the attention of many companies on improving plant efficiency to reduce energy costs.

Condition management and preventative maintenance programmes are now all important as industry strives to contain overheads.

One company gearing-up to provide an all-embracing maintenance service to help businesses reduce their exposure to this tax is Deritend.

And an important part of its strategy has been to strengthen commitment to thermal imaging technology with the purchase of a new FLIR ThermaCAM PM675 camera.

The Deritend Group has been established to provide a dedicated and growing resource for companies seeking to outsource some or all of their maintenance requirements.

Formerly the Deritend Division of Lee Beesley Deritend plc - part of the French group GTIE - the new company was formed as a result of a management buy-out in March this year.

"Our work takes us into all manner of environments," explains Production Manager Dave Hills.

"We therefore needed a thermal imaging camera that is simple to use and suitable for use in temperature extremes." As surveys involve a lot of foot-pounding, the portability and weight of the camera were also important issues.

The FLIR ThermaCAM PM675 has been bought to ease the workload of the company's ageing FLIR Agema 470 camera.

For Deritend, thermal imaging has become an increasingly popular method of identifying process, production and plant hot-spots, enabling faults to be rectified before they become expensive failures.

"A prime reason for our choosing FLIR again was to give good continuity to customers between branches," Dave Hills continued.

The company has bases in Grimsby, Luton, Pontypridd, Sheffield, Stoke-on-Trent, Walsall and Wolverhampton.

"We also considered the PM675 the best in terms of value for money and were very impressed with the ThermaCAM Reporter report generating software." FLIR's proven service back-up was another plus.

The difference in the two cameras exemplifies the huge strides that have been made not only in imaging technology but also component rationalisation and miniaturisation.

In addition to being far lighter and much more compact than its forerunner, the ThermaCAM PM675 is uncooled and therefore requires no noisy cooling mechanism.

Initial start-up time is also much quicker as the camera does not require cooling.

This is of particular importance to companies such as Deritend whose profitability rests on the efficient use of time.

Clearer IR imaging is also a feature of the new generation ThermaCAM cameras as is a far larger image storage capacity allowing more work to be undertaken in the field.

For Deritend, a thermal imaging survey can be in a nuclear power station or on a offshore gas platform so having the potential to capture up to several hundred images on one PC card is a distinct benefit.

Applications typically include checking the integrity of electrical connections, locating leaks in underground pipework, monitoring the temperature of a product during manufacture and checking liquid levels and flow efficiency.

Not all work is conducted in the UK however.

Included in Deritend's workload are projects in Hong Kong and China.

"Deritend undertakes a wide range of thermal imaging applications in an equally broad spectrum of working environments," Dave Hills concludes.

"The camera's user-friendliness and easy report generation are key attributes for us.".

Back to top