injector or vacuum pump?
injector or vacuum pump?
(OP)
Hey people. The company that I work for serves currently as a contract engineer for some municipal solid waste incineration plant with energy recovery project. The contractor proposed initially use of injector to make vacuum in the condenser. Now they want to use vacuum pumps. We, as the CE, consider which solution is "better". Does anybody here have experience with both systems? What are pros and cons of them?
RE: injector or vacuum pump?
RE: injector or vacuum pump?
Steam jet air ejector systems have no moving parts, but they use steam and have heat exchangers that need to be kept in order.
There are a few different vacuum pumps used, liquid ring are common because they seal using water, but they need clean cool water to work.
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Plymouth Tube
RE: injector or vacuum pump?
If you install ejectors insist that the mechanical maintenance team clean the condenser during a unit outage. It's not a big job and I have been on some awful return-to-service duties where the ejector simply wouldn't work properly, and the problem was the condenser being clogged with a couple of hundred kilos of silt. When mechs say the condenser is clean, the only acceptable answer is 'prove it'.
RE: injector or vacuum pump?
The details of the specific application will control the ultimate choice of equipment. Take care in the system energy analysis to account for the effects of the steam source and the feed water heating effects of the ejector system vs. the true cost of electric power and water consumption of liquid ring pumps. The electric power for the liquid ring pump comes from the end-product of the system rather than some mid-cycle extraction point for the steam.
Liquid ring pumps cannot be expected to pull as deep a vacuum as ejectors, but ejectors can work nicely in series with a liquid ring pump serving as the last stage to get the necessary deep vacuum while consuming less steam if that is actually beneficial for the particular system.
Valuable advice from a professor many years ago: First, design for graceful failure. Everything we build will eventually fail, so we must strive to avoid injuries or secondary damage when that failure occurs. Only then can practicality and economics be properly considered.
RE: injector or vacuum pump?
One issue with ejectors is that they do not get inspected enough.
The capacity and blank off pressure should be checked regularly and the orifice inspected, as well as maintenance of the condensers. They are not trouble free.
At the same time many power plants have run LR pumps for decades with no issues. In a tight system they have the advantage of being able to turn off excess pumps and reducing house load.
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Plymouth Tube