Technically advancing your traditional heaters or dryer with infrared heaters or infrared based dryers are always has been great decision or making up to quality product requirements of the market with lesser cost and time. It’s important to stop for while to understand and give critical thinking over below points:
- What advantages will the Infrared heaters/dryers will bring along in my current process?
- Will it help in reducing the total processing cycle time?
- What will type of materials, which get processed?
- What is the physical, physiochemical property, absorptivity, Size, Microstructure and Optical Properties of material?
- Can the existing heating/drying system be used?
- What will be the space requirement for the new IR installation?
There could be thousands of more questions or concern points that arise can arise in your mind when you think of such changes, hence it’s very important to take help or consult experts or heating consultant or search for heating manufacturer, who is expertise in designing and building infrared based heating solution (partnering with company such as KERONE can help you with best suited IR heater/dryer for process requirements).
First and most important aspect in choosing right infrared based heating or drying solution is understand the material that to will be processed inside the Infrared heater/Infrared dryer, as every material absorbs infrared (IR) differently. The generation of heat on material takes place through the absorption and scattering of radiation. When an electromagnetic wave passes through a medium, it undergoes diffraction from the surface of a particle whose refractive index differs from that of the medium. This phenomenon is known as scattering or weakening. The scattering and absorption depends on the size form of particles, micro-structure and optical properties of material under processing and also on the wavelength of the radiation of the Infrared emitter. On the other hand the radiation absorption in material depends mainly on the water content, thickness, and physicochemical nature of the material and wavelength of the radiation.
Hence choosing the correct wavelength for the Infrared heaters is very critical. The infrared emitter which generates or radiates the desired wavelength becomes very important part of the infrared heating/drying systems. Choosing correct emitter ensures the most effective heat work that will yield reduced cycle time i.e. achieve the desired temperature very quickly. To understand the basic IR wavelength requirements it’s important to understand the Planck’s Law, the Max Planck reported that “the spectral distribution of radiation from a blackbody source that emits 100% IR radiation at a given single temperature”. According to Planck the higher the object temperature the greater the amount of IR energy will be produced