Competitive Displacement: InfraRed Technology

Our discussion with Debra Hall, our Director of Sales, on Competitive Displacement in flammability Monitoring continues this week (read Part 1 Here): 

Part 2: Competition – InfraRed Technology 

As you know, when discussing flammability monitoring and keeping safe, we manufacture all technologies that can be used for %LFL (%LEL) measurement. Instead of trying to force one technology over another, we instead, are able to provide the appropriate technology to meet the application.   

Unlike area monitoring,  process environments are heated and tend to operate at maximum flammability levels. It is therefore important to have an analyzer that can do the job quickly, reliably, and provide consistent and repeatable results. 

InfraRed Technology has been used in many process environments incorrectly. While this technology is good for  clean, dry samples of single solvents and/or combustibles – what happens when the user has one or two solvents as well as other process compounds?

Here is a Case History of a customer who was using IR detection for their “simple” process environment and what went wrong.

In order to  accurately measure and optimize the process, here are some points to consider when choosing the proper technology: 

• Is the sensor and its sampling system completely heated to a temperature above the flashpoint of all solvents present?
• Is the entire system heated to a temperature above the dew point of its condensables, especially of water vapor? 
• Can the sensor read all flammable components in the sample stream accurately?
• For the solvents to be measured, now or in the future, how different is the response of one to another? How much error results from measuring different solvents?
• Can the device be calibrated according to code and still allow dryer operation without false alarms?
• How quickly can the device make an alarm? Is the time-to-alarm less than a few seconds?

Having in-depth knowledge of what type of analyzer is best suited  to the process environment, allows us to help our customers implement the best safety systems while allowing them to operate economically.