Water Quality & Boilers
Tyical Firetube Boiler
As of 2005, there were 162,805 industrial boilers operating in the United States alone. Each one of these turns water into steam for a multitude of purposes, from heating to food production. Regardless of their application, water and fuel are the primary inputs, and the quality of both is of prime importance to the safe and efficient operation of a boiler. Crane Environmental produces two product lines to manage the water quality of boiler feed; Deaerators (DA) and Reverse Osmosis systems(RO).
Cochrane Deaerator EPROi Reverse Osmosis System
From the illustration at top, it is clear that the multitude of tubes in a fire tube boiler present tremendous surface area to the incoming feed water. These surfaces ar subject to corrosion and to the accumulation of suspended and dissolved solids in water that is introduced for heating and conversion to steam. Deaerators help reduce the corrosive nature of water by removing fee oxygen. When operated and maintained properly, deaerators (DA's), pictured above in the left, may remove free oxygen in a feed stream to just a few parts per billion (ppb).
Reverse Osmosis (RO) systems help reduce the fouling of the interior boiler surfaces. The accumulation of suspended and dissolved solids, usually in some form of carbonate, greatly reduces boiler efficiency by effectively insulating boiler tubes and retarding heat transfer. RO systems may reduce total dissolved solids (TDS) levels to just a few parts per million (ppm) or less. This improves boiler efficiency, and also decreases the amount of maintenance required to operate the boiler, especially the reduction in blow-down cycles required to clean out precipitates in the boiler.