Poor Boiler Feed Water Quality
Poor Boiler Feed Water Quality
(OP)
I'd like to know about the operations of boilers with less than ideal feed water (ASME quality). What type of maintenance are you doing? How often are you cleaning? What type of failures do you have? Do you have reliability numbers (ie/ MTTF, MTTR, etc...) I'm really interested in high pressure, 1000+ psig, boiler operation, but i'd still like to know about any operation. What type of design considerations would you do to fix this?





RE: Poor Boiler Feed Water Quality
Come back with a description of your boiler.
Just what are your water quality problems?
RE: Poor Boiler Feed Water Quality
I have dealt with some low pressure steam boilers (200 PSI) with crappy water and the problems are legion; scale, tube failures, loss of performance, tube pluggage, drum internals fouling to name a few. I would not have wanted to see what all that would have been if the pressure (and temperatures) were associated with 1000 PSI.
rmw
RE: Poor Boiler Feed Water Quality
RE: Poor Boiler Feed Water Quality
You stated that the parameter that is out of spec is silica. Isn't silica corrosive? How many tube replacements (including down time) will it take to exceed the cost of improving your boiler feed water up front?
Granted, I don't define a "significant period" of time as being two plus years. That would be the minimum period of time that I would expect any boiler to run without cleaning.
Patricia Lougheed
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RE: Poor Boiler Feed Water Quality
RE: Poor Boiler Feed Water Quality
RE: Poor Boiler Feed Water Quality
This isn't really something that you can afford to get wrong, the cost of boiler damage is too high. Not to mention the risks of pitting and gouging causing catastrophic failure.
Consult a treatment specialist or three! these guys will often do a survey for free as they will want to sell you their chemical treatments afterwards. Try to get hold of the Spirax Sarco book of water treatment. You won't become an overnight expert but you'll be speaking the right language when these guys arrive. You have got to know what's in the water, the risks posed by this and then take steps as appropriate
Goodluck