Engineering Insights Blog

As we study heat transfer and any thermal system, we will need to consider the three types of heat transfer, which are conduction, convection, and radiation.

When designing an electric heating system for industrial processes, important factors routinely include required power, location, ducting, air source, and controls, but circuit protection is often overlooked.

Since heaters usually play an integral role within the application, any failure can rapidly expand to a major issue or shutdown. Many of these disasters can be avoided by increasing the mean time between failures!

SCFM is an acronym for Standard Cubic Feet per Minute. Whether it is supplied by a fan, blower, or compressed air line, the volumetric air flow rate is simply stating the volume of air passing through over a given unit of time.

Grounding a device generally serves two purposes. The first is to provide a safe path for current flow in the event of a short circuit. The second is to provide a true “zero voltage” reference for the circuit.

In the world of heaters, surface heaters aren’t really very sexy – they often consist of little more than a few pieces of mica and some wire.

For a typical convection air heating application, the air temperature and the volumetric air flow entering the heating element, and the power produced by the element are known or can be specified.