Best Practices for Temperature Monitoring Systems

CLEVELAND - April 8, 2020 - PRLog -- Whether your industry is regulated and you are required to log storage temperatures or not, it is a good practice to do so. Having a continuous record of the temperatures at which your material is stored makes both practical and financial sense. How else can you be assured that what you are storing remains viable? In many cases, your customers may require that you provide them with a history of the storage temperatures as part of your service. In addition to temperature history, having a system that also provides alerts when the temperatures go out of range gives you the opportunity to act to save the material. The benefit of the alert or alarm can be significant.

Initial Setup & Configuration

Choose a sample rate that reflects the potential for your refrigerator/freezer to change. A faster sample rate equals more data over time, but that does not necessarily mean better data. The other consideration to the sample rate is the sensitivity of your material to temperature. If you have a relatively wide range of acceptable storage temperatures, you can accept a slower sample rate. A high sensitivity typically means a faster sample rate. In most cases, a 15 or 30-minute sampling interval is appropriate.

Temperature Probe Placement

The position of the probe in the storage cavity is important, as it measures the temperature at a single point in space. That point should be where it best reflects the temperatures of the material in the refrigerator or freezer. If the refrigerator cools by forced air, having the probe in the airflow will yield more fluctuations than if it is in a still area of the refrigerator.

Test the Alarms

You should test the function of the alarms before you rely on them. You need to ensure that the e-mail addresses and phone numbers for text messages or voice calls are actually received. Catching a mistyped character during configuration can prevent a loss in the future.

Review the Operation of Your System

In the early stages of using a temperature monitoring system, the data should be reviewed more frequently than a system that has been in place for many years. You need to determine that the system is operating and functioning as you require. This means data is getting recorded as desired (sample rate). The data being recorded is meaningful and accurately represents what the stored material is experiencing. Do you see fluctuations in the measured temperature or is the reading unchanged no matter what is happening with the door to the refrigerator?

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