The study's findings were published in the academic journal Thermal Science and Engineering Progress.
Technological development or the growing cost of energy used for heating production facilities and other industrial premises can result in a reduction of usable space in companies, the authors of the research noted. For example, some companies in Russia use only 10-20% of the space they occupy.
According to the research conducted by Tyumen scientists, the energy costs to create necessary working conditions can be reduced five-fold or even more if traditional convection heating is replaced by radiant heating systems that use gas-fired infrared emitters.
"Given the small proportion of usable floor area and volume of premises, heating them by warming up the entire air mass is extremely disadvantageous. We have carefully studied heat transfer in the 'ecosystems' of local workplaces, taking into account, among other things, the nature of heating of the worker's clothes and the orientation of certain parts of the fabric relative to the direction of the radiation flux. No calculations of similar heating systems currently exist either in Russia or abroad", Geny Kuznetsov, professor at the Butakov Research Centre of the TPU School of Energy and Power Engineering, said.
The researchers explained that infrared radiation "targets" the required areas of the floor and equipment that transfer heat to adjoining air layers. The efficiency factor of these systems can be as high as 80%.
The scientists at TPU and TIU are convinced that gas infrared heat would be useful for heating any enterprise in the mechanical engineering, instrumentation, and oil and gas industries.