Investigation on the cooling process of volcanic lava

In this paper a tool for the direct measurement of heat transfer in cooling lava is presented. The system is aimed to acquire local information on the emissivity parameter characterizing the cooling process. To reach this target useful information about phenomena ruling the crust formation process has to be acquired, such as the crust temperature and the thermal radiation intensity. The discussed task is of main importance for those application where the need of a real-time evaluation of the emissitivity arises. Moreover, the information acquired with the proposed tool can be used to develop analytic model of the lava cooling process. Radiation thermometry principles and a suitable user interface have been adopted to develop the measurement equipment.