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Thermal imaging is a promising technology in the field of predictive maintenance. However, the effective use of infrared sensing techniques in predictive maintenance necessitates (1) good preliminary preparations, (2) regular imaging of the targets, (3) an infrared imaging system equipped with a floppy-disk drive, and, (4) an effective computer program for making analyses and drawing conclusions. At present, due to the lack of suitable software, there are not many practical applications of this technique in this field. In this paper, a functioning maintenance program for an industrial plant using a thermal sensing technique is presented. The strategy for constructing this program and the problems involved in this work are introduced. Also the main results, which clearly indicate the usefulness of thermal sensing techniques in predictive maintenance, are presented. This maintenance program has been constructed and been in use in the modern hazardous waste plant, EKOKEM Ltd., for the last two years. This program uses an Inframetrics model 760 infrared thermal imaging radiometer and a Thermonitor thermal image processing program by Thermoteknix Systems Ltd. The maintenance consists of (1) regular thermal imaging of the critical parts of the incinerators and (2) thermal image computer analysis. Also, a large table (arrays of thermal images) illustrating visually the target temperature behavior as a function of time has been constructed. This table together with the data from the computer analysis show both slow and rapid temperature variations clearly. The hot spots and limited hot areas which are indications of abnormal wear, are easily observed in our analyses. There is no way to observe these local hot spots using any other method. Thus unnecessary shutdowns, in some cases, can be prevented.
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