Monthly Archives: February 2013
- February 08, 2013
What is emissivity?
Emissivity is the ability of an object to emit or absorb energy. Perfect emitters have an emissivity of 1, emitting 100% of incident energy. An object with an emissivity of 0.8 will absorb 80% and reflect 20% of the incident energy. Emissivity may vary with temperature and spectral response (wavelength). The hotter an object is, the more active its molecules are, and the more infrared energy it emits.
As ceramic infrared heaters are smaller than carbon panel heaters, they produce much more heat per square inch of heating surface, therefore providing more valuable infrared heat.
What’s really important is intensity
Far infrared heaters do not differ in the type of infrared they produce but do differ in the amount of infrared that they produce. Infrared heaters are made with different qualities of carbon and ceramic materials and with different manufacturing processes. There are cheaply made, poor performing heaters and there are high quality,