Heat loss costs money:
Unwanted heat loss costs money. The cost of installing removable insulation jackets is often offset by the large savings in fuel bills which can be achieved.
The effect of Insulation Jackets:
Any surface which is hotter than its surroundings will lose heat.
The dominant contributing factors are …
- the temperature and
- area of the surface
The greater the temperature and the greater the surface area, the greater the losses.
Adding removable insulation jackets to a hot surface reduces the external surface temperature.
Conversley, the surface area is increased if insulation is added to a circular pipe.
The relative effect of the temperature reduction by the addition of the thermal jacket is much greater than the increase in slight increase in heat emission due to increased surface area and a reduction in heat loss is achieved.
Adding removable insulation jackets to exposed hot pipe work makes sense.
Example:
Consider for example, a 15 mm bore pipe running through still air (at 20°C) carrying a hot fluid raising its external temperature to 75°C.
The heat loss is about 60 W per metre of pipe run.
The addition of a 25 mm thick layer of standard pipe insulation would increase the surface area by a factor of approximately 3.5, but the external surface temperature would fall from 75°C to around 23°C.
The overall effect would be to reduce the heat loss from 60 W to 12 W per metre run of pipe.
The ‘avoidable’ cost increases dramatically as the temperature of the process fluid increases.
If the hot fluid was at 200°C, the ‘bare pipe’ cost would be significantly greater and the payback on the removable thermal jacket would be shorter.
Heating systems operating 24 x 365 (8,760 hours) generally have a payback in 10 – 14 months depending on the size of the pipework to be covered by the removable thermal insulation
For more information on the SEAI Energy Efficiency Obligation Scheme see the link below
https://www.seai.ie/energy-in-business/energy-efficiency-obligation-scheme/
Contact us now on info@insulationjackets.ie or M: 087 7974359
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