I've borrowed a thermal imaging camera from our equipment testing department at work (Fire and Rescue Service). The ones we've had for a few years now don't capture an image and haven't the colour display, which can be handy on occasion. These do and can take video clips as well as stills. After a fruitless half-hour trying to load up the camera's software on my laptop to upload the photos, the best I could manage was to 'display image' on the camera's screen and take a photo from that. There are a number of colour options for the display. I went for red for hot, shades of yellow for warm and grey tones for ambient temperature, the figure on the left, base of the display. Where the white square cursor rests relates to the temperature displayed at bottom right. First off, a Svea 123 going well with a flame temp of 511°C Putting a Primus Litech kettle on the stove has the effect of quenching the flame to the tune of 112°C I'd normally remove the control key in use but I was curious to see what temperature it reached. Early on in the firing, it was a comfortable 32°C Good reason to take the key out in use, it wasn't long before it had reached 71°C Some minutes after switch off, the pot supports, burner bell and flame plate were still hot, though not obviously so to the naked eye British army No.12 equipped with a BD silent burner converter cap. Priming phase Full power. Comparable to the flame temperature reached by the Svea, but over a much greater burner area Finally, a Hank Roberts butane stove. Pretty impressive for butane and not a butane/propane mix with ambient temperature at 17°C. It establishes that I wasn't imagining the power of a 'simple' butane stove, attributable to the wick-supplied liquefied gas feed I was keen to establish that the plastic top/outlet of my home-made Hank Roberts pattern gas cartridge didn't heat up in use. In fact, the evaporative cooling of the butane reduced its temperature to a shade under ambient temp I'll see if I can get the software sorted to get better picture quality and will post some more results ... Primus 85, Primus 4-burner 'rocket' stove, Coleman Handy Gas Plant should make for interesting readings! Other end of the scale, Trangia, Turm, Drew&Sons picnic stove ... John
Hey John, nice toy! Nice thermal pictures. So the yellow parts are how hot compared to the red area? Ron
Sorry Ron, I should have said. Ranges from around 50°C in the darker yellow areas to 100°C where the colour's more intense John
Lanevitt: Hilarious! I almost fell off my chair when I envisioned one sitting on his kingdoms royal seat and trying to take a photo with that Thermal camera of himself! LoL. The funny thing is you know someone out there you know has tried to do this! you just know that some one has tried. LoL. Much like a man with the first radar speed detector trying to see how fast his right hand is when he is polishing his lower waist.. LoL.
That looks like great fun. Thanks John. Good luck with getting the pics up on your computer. What else have you thermal imaged around the house?
Very interesting John - and this must be a first! I hope you can borrow this bit of kit a wee bit longer so you can look at several of your stoves - paraffin, petrol and gas. Cheers, Rob
Well, not the toilet (Andrew!). Let's have a think ... Domestic stove gas hob burners - not as hot a flame as the Svea 123 Automobile after a drive - under the hood, brakes, tyres, radiator Gas fire in lounge Roof - checking how efficient the loft insulation is Bolognese sauce in saucepan on hob Seems likely Rob. This is a demo camera that we've already had from the manufacturer for a few months and they're in no hurry to get it back. We're about to place an order, so it's served its purpose and can't be re-sold. Each one of these gadgets is £6000 ... John
Turning the camera at my house roof, car, bolognese sauce apart - while I've had the use of it it's had a serious use, helping me confirm I'd got my technique for refilling Coleman Powermax cartridges with 60% butane, 40% propane right Refilling Coleman Powermax cartridges Coleman Xpert stove fuelled on home refilled butane/propane mixture John
Hi John Would like to see Nicks 702 at full tilt 8) but it may burn out the sensor Nice toy John , so do you need more loft insulation then Stu
It's the fuel that ultimately determines the flame temperature, so I doubt that it would reach a temperature much than that from a Svea 123, but the amount of heat put out certainly would be a lot more. A sparkler (firework) burns at 1000 to 1600°C but you'd be hard pressed to boil a kettle over it. I'll dig some large bore ordnance out of the shed later to give it a go. John
Some more stove firings. Primus 85 (to the left of the smaller burner-ed Primus 84 in this photo) Priming, Primus windshield clipped in place Priming charge is nearly spent but I've shut the air valve and begun to pressurise the tank, so the flame ring's starting to heat up as the main burner kicks in Burner up to full power, temp of flame ring 642°C, not that much higher than Svea 123 (511°C) but putting out massively more heat energy Checking the temperature of the burner tubes in the vicinity of the jet nipple (308°C) Even larger (unbranded) roarer burner fitted to Primus 85 It reached a slightly higher temperature than the Primus 85 burner (658°C) but put out more heat energy Coleman Handy Gas Plant There's a lot of cast iron to heat up in this burner and the burner has a large surface area. It still manages to reach 435°C nevertheless Away from the burner slit outlets, the cast iron is a cooler 124°C Incidentally, since I've adapted that HGP to run on kerosene instead of white gas, I can't use the instant start feature, so I've to prime it with a blowlamp. I use an Optimus in proportion to the HGP. It gets up to 764°C Primus Omnifuel on white gas and with BD silent burner converter cap fitted. Cap hit 530°C BD cap put to one side and roarer flame plate back in place, burner bell reached 569°C BD cap cooling off, but still at 103°C, so too hot yet to pop back in the stuff-sack Trangia 27 Burner got up to a respectable 226°C Flames licking up the side of the pot (131°C) Contents of pot (89°C) Time for tea John
SUPER!!!..the stove info just keeps coming here on CCS..if you have a 99 or one of the stoves with the tank covered with a heat shield i would like to see a shot with the shield on and off..
Why didn't I think of that? Great suggestion Dave. Yes, I'll give a 99 a go, a 111, an 8R, Radius 46 and my Primus 41 with a silent burner that didn't have a heat shield fitted from new as far as I can make out but that gets distinctly ... lively ... when it's got underway. John
Optimus 99 Gets interesting when a kettle's set to boil. Prior to that, the burner's hot (461°C) but not a lot of the heat is reflected downwards With a kettle added things start to get interesting, substantial amounts of heat being reflected down and spilling out around the kettle base. The fuel tank's at 53°C Temperature just above the heatshield is 151°C Windshield itself is at 89°C Kettle's nearly at boiling point now Radius 46 Hot little burner (566°C) The asymmetrical arrangement for the burner and flame pattern in relation to a kettle placed on the pot rest is a feature of this stove Thermal imaging reveals how the flame reflects off the heat shield and is projected across the base of the pot Kettle's reached boiling point Heat shield's at 250°C But the tank's just warm to the touch Burner's been shut down, this is just the residual heat The Optimus 99 and Radius 46 don't have significantly different arrangements in terms of heat shielding but they seem to arrive at a comfortable level of thermal equilibrium without things going 'boom'. The 99 tank is in closer proximity to the heatshield and the amount of heat reflected down, but the heatshield evidently works efficiently. Though the 46's heat shield gets hotter, it's vertically placed and not in such close proximity to the tank and the tank's outside the case when the stove's in use and out of the way of the reflected heat of the pot base. So why shouldn't the Radius's tank be significantly cooler in use than the Optimus's? The Radius's burner got around 100°C hotter. I'm supposing that in spite of the remoteness of the tank from the radiant heat, there's a greater measure of conducted heat through the fuel pipe to the tank. Both are self-pressurising stoves when all's said and done and their fuel tanks need some heat-spill from the burner to work effectively, especially in adverse weather conditions. Their designers evidently knew their business. John
Thanks!..as long as the 99's tanks not red I'm happy. I, like everyone else, just use the touchy-feely method..." ok--hummm-whoooo and better turn it down!"
G,,day the photos are very interesting. They put it into a slightly different perspective than my infrared thermometer. Same sort of read out, but I have to visualise as I take readings from different places. Yours is in one. kerry
