Competitive and sustainable growth

2 Objectives and Innovative Character

2.1 State-of-the-art in Thermal Applications

Over 60% of the processes used by manufacturing industry in Europe depend upon the accurate measurement and control of temperature and thermal properties of materials. Temperature measurement, for example, is a key element in the control of many industrial processes and the development of innovative products. Applications range from the processing, storage and shipment of perishable foodstuffs and biological materials to the development of more efficient and less environmentally polluting combustion processes for steel making plant. Accurate measurement and control of thermophysical properties is important in areas such as the development of improved insulating materials and energy efficient glazing products for the construction industry and the development and characterisation of new alloys and materials used in the automotive, aerospace and semiconductor industries.

To support this important technology Europe is well provided with NMIs which research, develop and maintain temperature scales, standards and measurement techniques. Intercomparison exercises are regularly carried out between NMIs to ensure that these scales and standards are consistent across the Community and with those of the rest of the world. Individual nations also have their own infrastructures to disseminate these scales and standards to industry, often via an intermediate network of accredited laboratories. Europe also has a research infrastructure for thermal metrology in the form of its universities and other centres of scientific excellence, often linked via national or European collaborative projects with industry and the NMIs.
However, unlike in the Far East and the USA, there is often a large gulf between the level of expertise and state-of-the-art of thermal metrology as developed and practised by the NMIs and other European centres of excellence and the day-to-day practices in European industry. There are many cases of direct absorption of the latest thermal metrology practices into specific industrial processes and many of the NMIs help facilitate this process at a national level through the setting up and running of industry focused awareness clubs, such as the Temperature and Thermophysical Properties Awareness Club (T2PAC) run by the co-ordinator, NPL, in the UK. However, even with these supporting activities, in Europe in general there is a genuine knowledge transfer problem. That needs to be addressed if the skill level and the timely transfer of research outputs to industry are to be improved. This problem is exacerbated because in many parts of Europe thermal physics is only taught as a sub-topic either in physics, chemistry engineering or environmental science. Thus, with the huge diversity of subjects in tertiary education, thermal physics is left completely aside.
It is surprising that for such a key component of industrial usage there is no strong institutional base of best practice, state of the art methodology and guidance. Instead, many engineers in industry, who are often responsible for the operation of significant industrial processes, have to glean thermal metrology advice and knowledge from wherever they can, and often from equipment suppliers. Vendors of thermal products and services are continually reporting that over 25% of the problems they are asked to provide solutions for in industry arise simply because there is a lack of knowledge of current best practice or a use of inappropriate or out of date techniques or processes.
These are precisely the issues that EVITherM will address by creating a highly visible, permanently available and easily accessible infrastructure linking the providers of state-of-the-art thermal metrology and expertise to users in industry.

2.2 EVITherM Strategy for Achieving the Aims

To achieve its objectives EVITherM will develop an integrated, Internet-based platform that will provide:

- The latest methods for measurement and control of temperature and thermophysical properties

- The most up to date and qualified thermal data

- Access to the most appropriate resources across Europe to address thermal problems
The platform will be supported by databases and directories of:-
- Best practice guides and training

- Suppliers of thermal equipment and services

- Latest research

- Institutes and expertise

- Latest available standards

- Health and safety developments

In addition to disseminating information and technology to users, EVITherM will also collect feedback from them that will be used to develop a quantitative view of new areas of temperature and thermophysical properties research required by industry. This will be made available to NMIs, universities and funding bodies, such as the European Commission, to assist in defining the future research needs of European industry and as a tool to identify and bring together European partners for collaborative research and development projects.
EVITherM will publish regular newsletters and directories of conferences, meetings and training programmes etc via its website. It will also collaborate with existing European providers of training courses, workshops and seminars, and with industry-focused awareness groups, to provide added benefit to their members and to increase awareness of and further promote the benefits of EVITherM membership to industry.

2.3 Innovation and Technical Objectives

The long-term sustainability of EVITherM will be assured by a strategy for self-funding after the initial EC-funded phase.

Thermal metrology is a necessary requirement of many manufacturing processes in a large number of industrial sectors. The correct choice of measuring equipment and measurement procedure are important if these processes are to perform to specification.
However, because we can all feel the effects of temperature and are aware of basic thermal measuring equipment, such as mercury thermometers, it is all too easy to assume that temperature measurements, equipment choice and methods of operation are straightforward. The same argument applies to the choice and usage of materials to achieve specific thermal insulation, radiation or conduction properties. As an example plastic is a better thermal insulator than steel but it requires a lot of knowledge and skill to specify which type of plastic, from the hundreds that are available, is the best insulator in a given operating temperature range or application or what type and colour of paint finish should be applied to steel radiators and what shape they should be to achieve optimum heat transfer into the air. These are relatively simple examples of problems that can be solved by the use of good thermal metrology.
Examples of more specific measurement problems that are encountered in industry range from measurement of the temperature of hot steel in a rolling mill to measurement of the temperature of fish in cold storage. In the latter case the measurement is routinely made using a 3mm diameter industrial sheathed thermocouple. However, it has been shown that under most circumstances it is the probe temperature which is being measured and not that of the fish. Errors of measurement here can have serious implications for public health.
In the steel rolling mill application the properties of steel are frozen in the temperature profile at many hundreds of degrees within the heart of a rolling mill. With the steel moving at speeds of 3m/s, radiation pyrometry is the main method of temperature measurement. However, radiation from the rollers and the gas-fired heating interfere with the measurement making it difficult to predict accurately or control the properties of the final product. The difficult problem of applying radiation thermometry against an intense radiation background is the subject of current research and achieving success in this area will yield significant economic, technical and environmental benefits.
These are only two examples of industrial problems that require new or innovative solutions. EVITherM will contribute to the identification and implementation of solutions for these and many other industrial problems by promoting the adoption of good thermal metrology in a wide range of industries, with consequent benefits to industry and its customers, and by identifying, researching and transferring new techniques, such as radiation thermometry for use in hostile environments, from research laboratories to the industries where they are needed.