One of our shops is fairly large, about 300K+ square feet with 40' - 50' high ceiling.
We have a shielding gas manifold that runs throughout the ceiling, with drops at most columns and some in-between, maybe 40 drops all together to feed about 100 weld cells.
The manifold is typical carbon steel screw pipe, handling 90/10 Argon/CO2 from bulk liquid tanks, at 80psi holding pressure.
I've determined through timing the cycling of the mixing station, while no one is welding, that the system is leaking 350 cf of gas per hour, or about $10K worth of shielding gas per month.
Each of the system drops from the ceiling has a shut off valve just above the weld cell connection points, so I shut all of them and re-checked the mixer. This caused the time between cycles to double, which means that half of my leaks are on the floor, and half are in the overhead.
I can find / fix the leaks on the floor fairly easily, but the ones in the overhead are tough to get to.
I really don't want to pay a couple of maintenance techs to spend the month of August in a boom lift, tracing and leak testing pipe in the ceiling of a weld shop.
A wise guy once told me that laziness is the real father of invention, which must be true, as I've had a brain fart which is that if there's a considerable leak in the overhead system, I should be able to see it from the floor if I use an infrared thermal vision scope.
I'm thinking this because the gas, which is coming from super-cooled liquid, has to be cooler than the hot air rising to the ceiling, so surely the temperature difference would be noticeable. Probably won't be able to spot a small leak, but should be able to see a large one...
If this is true, then at least the finding the leak(s) part of the job will be much simpler.
So, being a cheap skate, I asked around to borrow somebody's infrared hunting scope, but no one has one (or will loan it to me).
Then I started looking on line for cheapest options:
http://www.flir.com/hunting-outdoor/scouttk/https://www.amazon.com/Seek-Compact-Thermal-Imager-Android/dp/B00NYWAHHMThen I found that someone already stole my idea and made a thermal gas leak detection specific camera:
http://www.flir.com/ogi/display/?id=55671However, my Boss, who is a cheapskate as well, won't buy a damn thing unless I can show him that it will work before he cuts the check, which finally brings me to a question...
Has anyone used thermal imaging equipment before in a similar manner, to check for argon/CO2 leaks, and what was your experience?
Thanks,
Tim Gary