Air heaters to test sensors

CASE 

Sensata is an important supplier of sensors for the automotive industry. Many of these sensors must withstand huge temperature fluctuations. Sensata asked us to develop a customised solution to test these high-temperature sensors.

Ultimately, we developed two air heater models. One heater to generate temperatures of up to 1,000 degrees Celsius and one system to heat air up to 1,200 degrees Celsius in a test set-up to simulate the temperature of diesel exhaust fumes.

Excess-air and excess-fuel

An additional requirement was that the burners had to run both with an excess of air and excess fuel. This was necessary to measure the impact of different conditions and types of combustion on the sensors.

500 mbar back pressure

The fact that the burner also had to operate at a back pressure of 500 mbar was also unusual. We therefore also adapted the components around the burner based on this. The heater system that we supplied consists of a refractory lined stainless steel heater and a burner equipped with a fuel pump and a control unit.  

Follow-on order

After an extensive practical test, both air heater systems were commissioned in the Belgian Sensata test centre during the first half of 2013. The customer was fully satisfied and the systems are now being used continuously for testing purposes. As a result, a third special heater was supplied at the start of 2016. This can produce hot waste gases with step-less variation of between 300 and 1000 °C and again, at a back pressure of up to 500 mbar.