ENERGY MANAGEMENT AUDIT
MODULE 3
TYPES OF BOILERS
https://youtu.be/aO9vXsCpU5Y
Presentation 1
Types of boilers, Combustion in boilers, Performances evaluation, Feed
water treatment, Blow down, Energy conservation opportunities in boiler.
BOILERS
Introduction
• A boiler is an enclosed vessel that provides a means for
combustion heat to be transferred into water until it becomes
hot water or steam.
• The hot water or steam under pressure is then used for
transferring the heat to a process.
• Water is a useful and cheap medium for transferring heat to a
process.
• When water is boiled into steam its volume increases about
1,600 times, producing a force that is almost as explosive as
gunpowder (working of pressure cooker).
• This causes the boiler to be extremely dangerous equipment
that must be treated with utmost care.
• The process of heating a liquid until it reaches its gaseous state is
called evaporation.
• Heat is transferred from one body to another by means of
1. radiation, which is the transfer of heat from a hot body to a cold
body without a conveying medium,
2. convection, the transfer of heat by a conveying medium, such as
air or water and
3. conduction, transfer of heat by actual physical contact,
molecule to molecule.
Boiler Specification
• The heating surface is any part of the boiler metal that has hot gases
of combustion on one side and water on the other.
• Any part of the boiler metal that actually contributes to making
steam, is heating surface.
• The amount of heating surface of a boiler is expressed in square
meters.
• The larger the heating surface a boiler has, the more efficient it
becomes.
• The quantity of the steam produced is indicated in tons of water evaporated to steam
per hour.
• Maximum continuous rating is the hourly evaporation that can be maintained for 24
hours.
• F & A means the amount of steam generated from water at 100 °C to saturated steam
at 100 °C.
• TPH=Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons
• Unit of steam generated
Typical Boiler Specification
Boiler Make & Year : XYZ & 2003
MCR(Maximum Continuous Rating) : 10TPH (F & A 100°C)
Rated Working Pressure : 10.54 kg/cm2(g)
Type of Boiler : 3 Pass Fire tube
Fuel Fired : Fuel Oil
Boiler Systems
• The boiler system comprises of: feed water system, steam system and fuel system.
• The feed water system provides water to the boiler and regulates it automatically to
meet the steam demand.
• Various valves provide access for maintenance and repair.
• The steam system collects and controls the steam produced in the boiler.
• Steam is directed through a piping system to the point of use.
• Throughout the system, steam pressure is regulated using valves
and checked with steam pressure gauges.
• The fuel system includes all equipment used to provide fuel to
generate the necessary heat.
• The equipment required in the fuel system depends on the type of
fuel used in the system.
• The water supplied to the boiler that is converted into steam is
called feed water.
• The two sources of feed water are:
1. Condensate or condensed steam returned from the processes and
2. Makeup water (treated raw water) which must come from outside
the boiler room and plant processes.
• For higher boiler efficiencies, the feed water is preheated by
economizer, using the waste heat in the flue gas.
Selection of boiler
• The working pressure & quality of steam.
• Steam generation.
• Floor area available.
• Accessibility for repair & inspection.
• Comparative initial cost.
• The fuel & water available.
• Operating & maintenance cost.
BOILER PROPERTIES
Safety
Accessibility
Capacity
Efficiency
simple in construction.
initial cost and maintenance cost
capable of quick starting and loading.
Generate max steam
Weight and space
cost
Boiler Types and Classifications
Horizontal , vertical or inclined:
• If the axis of boiler is horizontal, the boiler is
called horizontal.
Advantage of horizontal boiler:
a. it should be repaired easily.
b. occupies less floor area.
• If the axis is vertical then it is called vertical.
• If the axis is inclined then it is called inclined.
Fire tube or “fire in tube” boilers;
• contain long steel tubes through which the hot gasses from a
furnace pass and around which the water to be converted to steam
circulates. (Refer Figure 2.2).
• Fire tube boilers, typically have a lower initial cost, are more fuel
efficient and easier to operate, but they are limited generally to
capacities of 25 tons/hr and pressures of 17.5 kg/cm2.
Figure 2.2 Fire Tube Boiler
Water tube or “water in tube” boilers
• in which the conditions are reversed with the water passing through
the tubes and the hot gasses passing outside the tubes (see figure
2.3).
• These boilers can be of single- or multiple-drum type.
• These boilers can be built to any steam capacities and pressures,
and have higher efficiencies than fire tube boilers.
• Advantages of water tube boilers
• Better control
• Less space accommodation
• Better efficiency
• A smaller size of tubes
Packaged Boiler:
• The packaged boiler is so called because it comes as a complete
package.
• Once delivered to site, it requires only the steam, water pipe work, fuel
supply and electrical connections to be made for it to become
operational.
• Package boilers are generally of shell type with fire tube design so as to
achieve high heat transfer rates by both radiation and convection (Refer
Figure 2.4).
• The features of package boilers are:
– Small combustion space and high heat release rate resulting in
faster evaporation.
– Large number of small diameter tubes leading to good
convective heat transfer.
– Forced or induced draft systems resulting in good combustion
efficiency.
– Number of passes resulting in better overall heat transfer.
– Higher thermal efficiency levels compared with other boilers.
• These boilers are classified based on the number of passes – the
number of times the hot combustion gases pass through the boiler.
• The combustion chamber is taken, as the first pass after which there
may be one, two or three sets of fire-tubes.
• The most common boiler of this class is a three-pass unit with two
sets of fire-tubes and with the exhaust gases exiting through the
rear of the boiler.
Stoker Fired Boiler:
• Stokers are classified according to the method of feeding fuel to the
furnace and by the type of grate. The main classifications are:
1. Chain-grate or traveling-grate stoker
2. Spreader stoker
1. Chain-Grate or Traveling-Grate Stoker Boiler
• Coal is fed onto one end of a moving steel chain grate. As grate
moves along the length of the furnace, the coal burns before
dropping off at the end as ash.
• Some degree of skill is required, particularly when setting up the
grate, air dampers and baffles, to ensure clean combustion leaving
minimum of unburnt carbon in the ash.
• The coal-feed hopper runs along the entire coal-feed end of the
furnace.
• A coal grate is used to control the rate at which coal is fed into the
furnace, and to control the thickness of the coal bed and speed of
the grate.
Figure 2.5 Chain Grate Stoker
• Coal must be uniform in size, as large lumps will not burn out
completely by the time they reach the end of the grate.
• As the bed thickness decreases from coal feed end to rear end,
different amounts of air are required- more quantity at coal-feed
end and less at rear end (see Figure 2.5).
2. Spreader Stoker Boiler
• Spreader stokers (see figure 2.6) utilize a combination of suspension
burning and grate burning.
• The coal is continually fed into the furnace above a burning bed of
coal.
• The coal fines are burned in suspension; the larger particles fall to
the grate, where they are burned in a thin, fast burning coal bed.
• This method of firing provides good flexibility to meet load
fluctuations, since ignition is almost instantaneous when firing rate
is increased.
• Hence, the spreader stoker is favored over other types of stokers in
many industrial applications.
Figure 2.6 Spreader Stoker
Pulverized Fuel Boiler
• Most coal-fired power station boilers use pulverized coal, and many
of the larger industrial water-tube boilers also use this pulverized
fuel.
• This technology is well developed, and there are thousands of units
around the world, accounting for well over 90% of coal-fired
capacity.
• The coal is grind (pulverized) to a fine powder, so that less than 2%
is +300 micro metre (μm) and 70-75% is below 75 microns, for a
bituminous coal.
• It should be noted that too fine a powder is wasteful of grinding mill
power.
• On the other hand, too coarse a powder does not burn completely
in the combustion chamber and results in higher unburnt losses.
• The pulverized coal is blown with part of the combustion air into
the boiler plant through a series of burner nozzles.
• Secondary and tertiary air may also be added.
• Combustion takes place at temperatures from 1300-1700°C,
depending largely on coal grade.
• Particle residence time in the boiler is typically 2 to 5 seconds, and
the particles must be small enough for complete combustion to
have taken place during this time.
• This system has many advantages
• such as ability to fire varying quality of coal, quick responses to
changes in load, use of high pre-heat air temperatures etc.
• One of the most popular systems for firing pulverized coal is the
tangential firing using four burners corner to corner to create a
fireball at the center of the furnace (see Figure 2.7).
Figure 2.7 Tangential Firing
Fluidized Bed Combustion (FBC) Boiler
• When an evenly distributed air or gas is passed upward through a
finely divided bed of solid particles such as sand supported on a
fine mesh, the particles are undisturbed at low velocity.
• As air velocity is gradually increased, a stage is reached when the
individual particles are suspended in the air stream.
• Further, increase in velocity gives rise to bubble formation, vigorous
turbulence and rapid mixing and the bed is said to be fluidized.
• If the sand in a fluidized state is heated to the ignition temperature
of the coal and the coal is injected continuously in to the bed, the
coal will burn rapidly, and the bed attains a uniform temperature
due to effective mixing.
• Proper air distribution is vital for maintaining uniform fluidization
across the bed.)
• Ash is disposed by dry and wet ash disposal systems.
• Fluidized bed combustion has significant advantages over
conventional firing systems and offers multiple benefits namely fuel
flexibility, reduced emission of noxious pollutants such as SOx and
NOx, compact boiler design and higher combustion efficiency.
