Earlier in the year we borrowed a thermal imaging camera to view the digester while the heating was being tested. While the amount of gas used to maintain the digester at 40C was being measured, the camera was used to find the greatest losses.
Thermal Imaging is now a much more common tool for assessing the heat losses from buildings to aid the improvement in insulation and save energy.
Though the images are revealing there has to be an understanding of what is happening to gain useful results. An example of this would be the time of day that a building was surveyed; if the camera was used in the evening after a sunny day the walls would appear to be emitting heat which on the face of it would show heat loss from the building, but if the wall was made of masonry it may have absorbed heat during the day and be re-radiating it.
Fortunately Malcolm has been trained but the digester is not made of materials commonly found on buildings so we must be cautious with our conclusions. Our goal is quite simple – to find the areas of greatest heat loss and try and improve them.
