TEMPERATURE CONTROL IN INDUSTRIES. 
wae ee 
Temperature Control in Industries. 
By RICHARD P. BROWN.* 
[From information received from time to time by the Institute of 
Science and Industry, it appears that In many industries in Australia 
there is a great lack of proper attention to temperature control. In 
certain metal industries, for example, difficulty is experienced in manu- 
facturing satisfactory articles, and not infrequently the product is 
entirely spoiled. Troubles of this nature are very often alleged to be 
due to faulty raw materials, whereas they are really due to lack of. con- 
trol of the temperatures at which various processes are carried out. The 
scientific control of temperatures at which industrial processes should 
be performed would necessitate the establishment of some organization 
which can undertake the necessary investigational work and the stan- 
dardization of heat-measuring instruments, and can furnish expert 
advice to those engaged in industry. The temporary Institute has not 
been able to undertake this work, but it offers a highly important field 
of activity for the proposed permanent Institute. In this connexion, 
the following article will be found of interest.] : 
There is probably no problem offering greater possibilities of attain- 
ing efficiency in hundreds of industrial processes than the automatic 
control of high temperatures. Every manager of an industrial plant, 
where high temperatures are used in furnaces and ovens, has been con- 
fronted with the difficulty of maintaining a uniform or constant tempera- 
ture on account of the human element. 
Literally, hundreds of thousands of tons of coal and millions of 
allons of oil are burned to heat American industrial furnaces to a 
esired temperature. The labourer who has not the slightest idea as 
to what he is trying to do attempts to control the temperature by hand, 
with possibly the assistance of a pyrometer or thermometer as a guide. 
How many managers or executives have thought of the tremendous 
loss in fuel which occurs, due to the maintenance of an excessive 
temperature, with its consequent excessive consumption of fuel and 
spoilage of the product. If, instead of too high a temperature, too 
low a temperature is maintained, the product may be just as readily 
spoiled in its heat-treatment, and an excess amount of fuel is consumed _ 
to get the temperature up again to the desired point.. If there can be 
automatic temperature control, the human element is eliminated and an 
accuracy of control attained which is impossible with hand control. 
During the past few years, tremendous strides have been made in 
the automatic control of high temperatures. Mercurial thermometers 
can have platinum contacts installed in the glass stem of the thermo- 
meter, and when the mercury rises or falls to predetermined points, an 
electrical contact can be made to operate a switch or valve: These 
same contacts can be applied to nitrogen-actuated long distance ther- 
mometers, or to the various types of thermo-electric pyrometers for high 
_ * From the Journal of the American Society of Heating and Ventilating Engineers, May, 1920. 
431 
