Maintaining an elevated temperature is often essential in order to prevent condensation and/or crystallization of media at instrumentation points in chemical and petrochemical plants, and sample conditioning systems for analyzers.

Complete insulation of the measurement and analysis station is rarely possible due to the requirement for maintenance and calibration. Some users create ad hoc solutions in the form of a 'hot air shower' where a fan (or compressed air) warms the local environment. These can be very energy intensive and can be difficult to build for hazardous areas (and are not usually suitable for applications demanding closely regulated temperatures).

The optimal solution is a 'hot box' (US) - an enclosure for the equipment in question, fitted with a heating element and controller. Care needs to be taken with the design for best results, choosing and considering the elements as an inter-related system, rather than simply assembling a collection of discrete components.

INTERTEC offers a complete design and build service and has, probably, the longest track record in this commercial area. Our experience allows us to create the optimum solution: using the right insulation, the best kind of heat transfer, equipment positioning, control algorithm, etc to build a system that performs both accurately and reliably.

For further information, please refer to our data sheet.

Call us to discuss your application, or read a useful article on this topic here, published by Engineer IT (South Africa).

A typical INTERTEC 'hot box': a well-insulated GRP enclosure with a smart conduction heater (behind substrate), housing an analytical sample conditioner built around a Parker Hannifin Intraflow SP76 modular substrate.