Modern Flame Evaluation

There are many ways to evaluate a flame.

The issue is, what do you want to observe, and what will you base your actions on ?

Older 1st generation scanners were limited in application by simple circuitry and a "sensitivity" adjustment that increased or decreased the amplification of the radiation signal.

Today we can not only choose which characteristics of the radiation we wish to observe, but we can also hook up a laptop and change our "Switch On" & "Switch Off" thresholds for different characteristics completely individually.

On top of that, we can select a completely separate set of all threshold parameters, within the scanner, on the fly.

The graph you see above, is a frequency signal from an oil flame at start up. Due to the discrimination and sighting of the scanner, the pilot flame never showed in our testing. (The data logging also allows us to see what is happening on site by the client sending us the logs via email.) With data like this, we could safely say that our "Switch On" Frequency setting should be just below 50Hz. We have more than 3 seconds there that are above 50Hz at light off. Our "Switch Off" threshold could be set at 40Hz with a one second "Switch Off" delay if we required very safe settings. ( It does dip to 40Hz at 12:21:26, but only for a fraction of a second.)



NOTE: This is all purely based on the charts shown here, and we would look at many scenarios, hot and cold starts etc, to make sense of a new installation.

Below is the "Amplitude" chart for the same main flame over the same time frame.

his is another parameter that we can set both thresholds on.As you can see, when all the signals logged are evaluated, we can make very precise adjustments to the modern scanners to suit your particular application. Therefore we can eliminate nuisance trips, whilst at the same time increasing safety.

We can also adjust sensitivity (Amplification) on both signals, and in two parameter sets.

It really is becoming a science now, guesswork and winding a knob are things of the past.