The other day I performed a Google search for 'How to detect an air leak'. Not surprisingly, it came up with millions of results, over 18 million in fact.
Whether solving the problem in a commercial establishment or a domestic home environment, the majority of search results pointed to one solution: soapy water!
Before we all ridicule the idea as belonging to a bygone era, take a vehicle with a slow puncture to a tyre fitting depot. Chances are they'll remove the wheel and spin it in water to determine the leak. It's a simple, time-proven method for determining leaks from pressurized systems.
But of course, not all equipment can be placed in soapy water. What if a system is known to be losing pressure and yet the lines carrying the compressed air from the source are located 10 metres above the ground, and dismantling the system is out of the question? Thankfully, there is a fast and effective solution at hand.
Each time air, or indeed any gas, leaks from a pressurized system, there is an associated sound. If the leak is significant, it can be audible to the human ear and therefore easily identified and rectified accordingly. However, most leaks in high-pressure systems are extremely small and are out of the range of a human ear.
Think about a pressurized air system on a large factory delivering compressed air from a bank of compressors to various stages of production throughout the manufacturing process. Chances are there are hundreds, if not thousands, of connections in the form of joints, reducers, valves, elbows, condensers, etc. Each of these has the potential to leak small amounts of air, reducing the pressure of the system.
One leak might make very little difference, but multiply this by the number of potential leaking joints, and efficiency can be significantly compromised. The compressor will seek to compensate for any pressure loss by simply working harder. However, as any engineer will know, compressors can be expensive to operate in terms of energy and therefore will certainly increase an operator's energy consumption.
With electricity costs being so much higher in Europe due to geopolitical factors in recent years, most companies are seeking to reduce the amount of energy used. Having a compressor work overtime to compensate for leaking joints is certainly not something senior management would smile about!
These scenarios are certainly not uncommon. In fact, one European compressor manufacturer has stated that in some industrial settings, up to 80% of air generated is lost in leaks. So clearly identifying these small leaks can make a real difference to a company's energy bills.
Although the sound produced by a small leak is inaudible to the human ear, a high-performance acoustic imaging camera such as the FLIR Teledyne Si2-LD will have absolutely no problem identifying the source.
Launched earlier this year, the camera is capable of detecting leaks of 0.05 liters per minute at a distance of 10 meters, meaning those elevated air lines pose no problem for this latest instrument in the FLIR acoustic imaging camera line-up.
For closer work, the camera is even more sensitive and can detect minute leaks of 0.0032 liters per minute at a distance of 2.5 meters. Coupled with this improvement, the third-generation camera has improved microphones now capable of detecting sounds over an extremely wide frequency range, namely 2 – 130 kHz.
Areas of plants are often dark or dimly lit. For this reason, FLIR has fitted the FLIR Si2-series of cameras with two powerful LED lights to make component identification easy even in poorly lit conditions.
Of course, it's not just compressed air that the camera is capable of detecting; noise emitted by any escaping gas is identified by the powerful microphones. However, that's only part of the story.
The FLIR Si2-LD has built-in software termed Industrial Gas Quantification. If the leaking gas is ammonia, hydrogen, helium, or carbon dioxide (very commonly used gases in a number of industries), the software is capable of quantifying the financial loss caused by the leak. By simply entering factors such as the cost per liter, the software identifies the amount each leak is causing over a given period of time. Such data is invaluable to financial analysts and senior management within an organization.
It goes without saying that the financial considerations are only one aspect of leaking gas. The gases mentioned above all carry significant health hazards and can present a variety of dangers to personnel if allowed to leak for any period of time. Ammonia and carbon dioxide can cause serious breathing problems and asphyxiation even in smaller concentrations, whereas hydrogen can explode in the presence of oxygen. Clearly, the cost of such problems goes way beyond any financial considerations.
We've come a long way since the "soap and water" approach. See how the latest technology from FLIR Teledyne can help in reducing downtime, lowering energy bills, and improving safety in your organization.
Visit www.flir.com or contact your local FLIR Teledyne agent or distributor.