Choosing Right Infrared Solution for Application

Posted on March 29, 2016 by admin

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

Infrared (IR) heaters for efficacious manufacturing

Posted on October 8, 2015 by admin

Manufacturing processes is changing day by day, doing business has become very challenging over time and new concepts of manufacturing process improvement had brought traditional way of production and all major and minor steps of manufacturing process under strict scrutiny. Concepts such as process improvement, lean management, Poke-yoke, Six Sigma and Just in time (JIT) have coerced manufacturer/team of experts to study and analyze the every process in terms of time required in every piece of product, space utilization factor, efficiency, economy of scale etc. Different concepts started working on different part of manufacturing processes, such as lean management and process improvement started by analyzing every necessary and unnecessary process involved in complete manufacturing process, entire manufacturing process is divided into small stages and then later every stage is further sub-divided to analyze worthiness of every single man power or machinery and all required steps are taken to improve or eliminate the process step that is not adding value to total manufacturing process and help to improve ROI.

As part of industrial manufacturing process such as heating, drying or welding those required the input process material to heat at desired process to achieve the desired quality output product. The conventional heating/drying techniques which results in required more time and energy to heat the input material, the conventional heating/drying takes longer time hence the batch size must be large as to match the future demand , this require excess inventory. The Conventional heating system heat complete chamber to achieve the desired level of heating at input material, hence this requires large amount of energy to be wasted. The conventional haters are huge in size which required larger floor space.

KERONE, itself have been manufacturing heating solution from last 40years and has witnessed the transformation in manufacturing process, hence to help our clients and society with better and more environmental friendly heating solution, we have adopted new technologies such as Infrared for heating and drying solution.

Infrared heaters/dryers uses infrared frequencies of Electromagnetic spectrum, these infrared frequencies fall just above the visible frequencies, Infrared heaters does not product heat as source but it produces heat at source i.e. material under processing. The infrared heater/dryer produces the heat by using the surface of input material, since it does not required to heat the air for transfer of heat it results in the rapid transfer of heat and causes material to get heated in very short span of time. These capabilities of Infrared heating/drying system help in achieving the more efficacious manufacturing by adding following advantages:

1) No time is wasted in heating, hence batch sizes are small even it’s suitable for the continuous heating which ultimately no need to maintain large inventory.

2) Since heat is generated as source itself, so it does not and no air is heated it results in lower energy consumption and it makes it green solution.

3) As it heats the surface of input material and air temperature is not required to maintain so it does not require large chamber size, hence infrared heaters offer better floor space utilization.

4) Zoning within the continuous infrared heating system allows not implementing different heating arrangements.

Infrared heaters/dryer had helped the manufacturers to achieve the great level of saving in terms of cost, time and space and makes the manufacturer to produce competitive product.

Infrared Heating System Vs Microwave Heating System

Posted on July 11, 2015 by admin

Radiation in the Electromagnetic Spectrum is often classified based on the wavelength (spatial period of the wave). Short wavelength radiation comprises of highest energy and which can be very harmful such as Gamma, X-rays and ultraviolet are some examples. Longer wavelength radiation carries lower energy and is typically harmless some examples include RF, Microwaves and infrared, hence these radiations find multiples application such as Communication, Heating, Data transmission and many more.

Infrared (IR) is invisible radiant energy, electromagnetic radiation with longer wavelengths than those of visible light, extending from the nominal red edge of the visible spectrum at 700 nanometers (frequency 430 THz) to 1 mm (300 GHz), where as Microwaves are a form of electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths ranging from as long as one meter to as short as one millimeter, or equivalently, with frequencies between 300 MHz (0.3 GHz) and 300 GHz. Microwave are having larger wavelength as compare to Infrared radiation.

In Infrared heating system the infrared radiated waves are absorbed water molecules and this absorption results in the heating of the material under the process. On other hand in Microwave heating, microwave radiated waves collides with the water molecules and results in the vibration of these molecules hence this travel of molecules produces heat.

Infrared heater heats the material under process from the outer surface to inner surface, as waves are absorbed by the material, whereas microwave heats the substance from inner to outer surface of material due to movement of molecules. Hence Infrared heaters are ideal replacement to the conventional hot air generators.

IR heating can be produced using either gas fired or electric powered infrared tubes. Microwave heating normally uses electricity to activate the magnetron for production of microwave radiations.

In Microwave heating system heating of material depends upon the presence of water molecules within the material, in Infrared heating system heating of material completely depends on the absorption characteristic of material.

Microwave heaters are faster process of heating as compared Infrared (IR) heaters depending on the material characteristic.

Heating/drying process that uses Microwave heater is highly controllable as compared to those has Infrared heaters. Cooling time of microwave is lesser as compared to Infrared heaters.

At KERONE, we manufacture both the type of heaters and help clients to choose the best heater/dryer based on the process need, incase of any information and query please contact us at info@kerone.com.