You are welcome to ask any relevant questions.

Please, share your know-how and contribute with answers to the visitors' questions. We
have all different experiences and no one knows everything, but together we can solve lots
of problems. An easy question for you might be a hard one for a colleague or vice versa.

Question: Boiler pressure

In tanker vessels we use boilers for cargo heating.
Lets say that steam pressure to deck line adjusted to 5 bar.
What will be most economical? Boiler pressure adjusted to 7 bar or to 16 bar ?
Answer:
The higher pressure would be advantageous if the boiler is oil-fired,
but the difference is hardly measurable.
If you have a diesel engine exhaust gas economizer then 7 bar boiler pressure would gain
more heat from the exhaust gases.

Question: Emegency low water level in the boiler

I want to know what should be my immediate action in case I saw no water in the boiler
gauge glass.
Answer:
Stop the burners immediately.
Do not pump in any feedwater until you know that the boiler is undamaged.
If some parts of the plates or tubes are glowing, then increasing of the water level will
cause an enormous evaporation and hence a pressure rise that the safety valves can't
manage and an explosion might be a fact.

Question: Cavitation in a two flow line

We have a steam generating facility using process heat. The condenser is a vertical
condenser with process vapours on tube side and boiler feed water on shell side. The outlet
of the shell side is a two phase flow. Pipe thickness reduction of the shell side outlet pipe is
observed for last couple of years. We replace the piece of pipe every one year. I want to
know the probable reasons for this to happen.
Answer:
I guess it might be a cavitation problem. Calculate the flow rate. Decreasing the speed of
the flow might be a solution i.e., increase the pipe diameter

Question: Boiler drum level control goes haywire

We are having 100 tones FBC boilers. Frequent problem observed is that whenever there is
sudden load change the boiler drum level control goes haywire leading to tripping of boiler
and turbine on drum level low or high. Our drum level control is 3-element control in auto
mode.
Answer:
The most common fault with a three-point level controller is the steam flow transmitter.
Loosen the impulse pipes and cleanse the holes into the measuring orifice.

Question: Firing light crude oil

Can a Main Boiler built to fire 380 cst HFO, be fired with light crude oil directly from the
cargo-tanks?
Answer:
A completely new fuel system is required, from deck to the burner rails of the boiler. To
prevent any possibility of gasses leaking from flanges, there have to be ducting enclosing
the entire fuel-system with forced draft fans that vent 30 times the volume of the trunking
to the outside. Also there have to be a burner hood to be constructed all over the burner
roof, equally vented. Naturally there have to be new burners and so is the burner
management.
There are two main contractors who are capable and willing to carry this out:
HAMWORTHY-Combustion Engineering in UK and SAACKE in Germany.

Question: Seawater in the boiler

If the boiler had to be operated with seawater what would be the result.
Answer:
The salinity will rise rapidly since the salt remains in the boiler while the water boils off.
Salt will son precipitate and accumulate on the bottom and also on the heating surface
where it, just as boiler-scales, inhibit the heat transmission to the water and causes the
metal to overheat and in worst case burst. You may also get foam in the boiler that will
cause difficulties to maintain the water level and water droplets might follow with the
steam, causing problems with turbines and engines.
It is very dangerous to operate a boiler with salt in it, and you have to control the salt
concentration by frequently blowing off from the bottom of the boiler and form the water
surface to keep the salinity below 9.5% (boilermakers and classification societies may
recommend other values).
It would also be a good measure to reduce the capacity of the boiler.
After this emergency operation it would be wise to open up the boiler for inspection since
seawater further accumulation of scales.

In the old days some ships sailing on lakes used the lakes water as make up water for their
boilers, but even that water caused problem with salt in the boilers although it is supposed
to be fresh-water.

Question: Heavy fuel oil viscosity

Heavy fuel oil viscosity is defined in the standards as the viscosity at 100C yet the oils are
often described in terms of their nominal 40 or 50C temperature viscosities. e.g. a G35 oil
(35cst at 100C) is often described as anything from a 350cst to 390cst oil. Refineries blend
to control the viscosity at 100C. Testing aboard ship or in boiler hosues appears to test the
viscosity at 50C. Because of the variation in quality of the residual oil and distillate that
make up a heavy fuel oil, it is difficult to make a good correlation between the 50C and
100C measurements. My question is, how is the blending of oil in the terminals or on fuel
barges controlled? and how reliable is this in achieving the required viscosity?
Answer:
The values you get from my Fuel Oil Calculation program are normally sufficient for firing
a boilers heavy fuel oil burner. For a diesel engine on the other hand, I assume that an
automatic viscosity-controller would be indispensable.

Question: Heating up a fire-tube boiler

Is there a minimum temperature that a fire-tube boiler should reach before going to a high
fire state to prevent tubes from leaking?
Answer:
The important thing is to heat up the boiler slowly so all parts of the boiler expand just as
much. The leaks occur when some part expands more, or less, than the rest of the boiler.
You will be on the safe side if you slowly heat up the boiler to, or almost to, normal
operation pressure before you start high firing.

Question: Combustion air preheating

Please tell me how air inlet temperature affects boiler efficiency. What are the benefits of
air preheating?
Answer:
The combustion air will be heated to the flame temperature. This heating cost money. If
you have some waste heat to be used for preheating the combustion air it will pay.

Question: Water in the heavy fuel oil

Is it possible to overheat heavy fuel oil thus causing any water in it to turn to steam and
cause problems at the pump and burner?.
Answer:
Yes it is. The temperature of the heavy fuel oil is very often 130C to 150C and water
introduced to that temperature would immediately evaporate into steam. When boiling it
expands about 1590 times. The situation might be dangerous since the safety valves not are
designed for steam.
This kind of problem is very likely to occur when you change fuel oil tank and some water
from a poorly drained pipe mixes with the heavy fuel oil.

Question: Oil showing in the water level gauge glass

Whilst on your engine room rounds, you discover oil showing in the water level gauge
glass of an auxiliary boiler. Describe the remedial actions you would take, explaining why
such actions must not be delayed.
Answer:
Stop the burner immediately.
Oil present, even small quantities, in boiler water will cause foaming and moisture carryover. It also forms a heat insulating film, sometimes a carbonized layer, over tubes or shell
surfaces. Even a very thin layer may result in tube or plate material failure due to
overheating.
The oil manifests itself by forming an oily ring inside the water gauge glasses, at the water
level.

Question: Emergency low boiler water level

You are an officer on watch, & finds the boiler water-level gauge glass to be empty & the
burner firing...What is your course of action? (Assuming the gauge glass to be clear &
good working order)
Answer:
Normally a boiler is provided with two independent sensors for emergency low water level
burner cut-outs. So this would never happen. However, if it does, dont take any chances!
Shut off the burners immediately!
Before you start raising the level in the boiler you have to find out if any part of the furnace
walls has been overheated. If you raise the level over a glowing steel-wall then the boiler
might produce more steam than the safety valves can handle and a nasty explosion would
be the result.
A quick test to see if it is safe to put water into the boiler is to temporarily close the steam

cock on the gauge glass. If the level rises to the top of the glass, it means that there is still a
water level in the water leg, which is also over the highest heat exchange surface in a
firetube boiler. The water rises because of the vacuum caused in the glass with condensing
steam.

Question: Differential pressure transmitters for the steam drum level

Way is the high pressure leg of the transmitter connected to the water side and the lowpressure leg connected to the steam side?
Answer:
The signal from the transmitter ought to increase when the water level raises and decreases
when the level falls. Furthermore the signal shall be zero, and give impulse to stop the
burner, in case of transmitter malfunction, power failure or cable breakdown.
Both requirements will be fulfilled if the transmitter is mounted with the high pressure
measuring point connected below the lowest water level and the low pressure measuring
point connected above the highest water level. The output will increase when the level is
raised. To compensate for the water column in the reference leg the output signal's zeropoint has to be elevated.
This is the common method.
If the transmitter is swapped, with the low pressure side to lower end and the high pressure
side to upper end, then the signal will decrease when the level is raised.
This signal can be used to control the level as well, but the signal can not be used to stop
the burner for emergency low level in case of power failure or cable breakdown. This
system requires an extra sensor to trip burner at emergency low water level.
One can of course use the emergency high water level alarm to stop the burner, but this is
not correct. The emergency high water level shall stop the feed water pump and whenever
applicable stop the steam turbine, but not the burner.

Question: Fluctuating boiler water level

The feed water control valve is fully open and the water levels fluctuate at normal boiler
load.
Answer:
Check if:

the control valve really is fully open by means of the hand-manoeuvre device.
all stop valves in the line are fully open.
the suction filter to the feed water pump is satisfactory clean.
the feed water pump discharge pressure is sufficient.

the feed water control valve pressure drop is normal. (>=2 bar or >=30 psi)

If all these are fund to be in order, then you should recalculate the control valves KV-value
(CV-value). Under-sized control valves do exist, even though over-sized control valves
more often cause malfunction of automatic control loops.
The tuning of the controller(s) is dependent on the system you have, but do not even try to
tune the control loops until the above criteria are fulfilled.

Question: The burner starts and stops very often

The burner starts and stops very often, sometimes every second minute. An alarming
temperature-raise has been observed in the combustion air fans electric motor.
Answer:

Increasing the burners turn down ratio would be a nice solution, but it's not always
possibly.
Run the burner in minimum load, i.e., prevent the burner from increasing the load
just after the burner start.
Install a five to ten minutes' time-delay in the fan-motor stop function. Then the fan
will continue to run during the shortest burner stops and the combustion air fan
motor will get a little rest from the start current.

Question: Most likely source of errors

In which part of a boiler control system is it most likely to get a failure.
Answer:
When you have problem with a boiler control system you should keep in mind that most
faults occur outside the control cubicle, but on the other hand, your problem might not be
among the most common.
Statistically calculated faults in control systems.
Transmitters and sensors
40 %
Actuators
25 %
Controllers
10 %
Loss of electric power
5%
Others
20 %
Question: Open steam valves slowly
Why has a steam valve, or at least a big steam valve, to be opened slowly?

Answer:
If you have a one liter of water standing in the pipe just after the valve and open the valve
too fast, then you will get a projectile of one kg rushing down the pipe. At next valve, bend
or other obstacle the speed of the water mass will be converted into pressure. You can
hardly imagine the damage this energy can cause.
Thermal stress is an other reason to be very cautious and drain out water carefully when
you open a steam valve.
A large steam valve ought to have a small by-pass valve to simplify preheating of the pipe.

Question: Low viscosity fuel for high viscosity burners

Our boiler plant is designed to be fired with heavy fuel oil of 590 cSt @ 50C.
Would it be safe to run it on Gas Oil of 7 cSt @ 40C?
Answer:
Well, this is a question for the burner maker. Don't forget to ask them too.
It is outmost important that the fuel oil heaters are by-passed when firing Gas Oil or Diesel
Oil. These fuels must never be heated above their flash-point.

For a steam atomized burner you have to switch over to compressed air atomizing
since light fuels must not be atomized by means of steam. This burner will probably
fire the fuel without any problem since they normally are designed for fuel viscosity
between 10 and 20 cSt.
A rotary cup burner, on the other hand, might give some problem with the flame
since this atomizing method normally require a fuel viscosity of about 25 to 60 cSt.

In the event of failed ignition, gas-oil is more likely to cause an explosive mixture than
heavy oil. However, a dangerous situation should never occur if the procedure for such
failed ignition is followed. Upon two consecutive failed ignition attempts, a thorough
investigation into the cause should be sought and the furnace correctly purged inline with
the manufacturers and ruling classification societys requirements.
N.B. 7 cSt @ 40C = 5.5 cSt @ 50C.
The viscositys of lighter fuels are normally given at 40C and the viscosity of heavier fuels
at 50C, 80C, 100C or even higher temperature.
For conversion of viscosity and density at one temperature to viscosity and density at an
other temperature I recommend The FUEL OIL Calculation Program.

Question: Fuel Oil Ignition Quality, CCAI

What is the CCAI of a fuel oil?
Answer:

The CCAI, the Calculated Carbon Aromaticity Index, is a measure of the Fuel Oils Ignition
Quality.
The value can be calculated using the following, ISO 8217 Ann.C, formula:
CCAI = D-81-141 Log10 Log10( VK+0. 85)-483 Log10((T+273)/323)
where
D = density (kg/m) at 15C
VK = kinematic viscosity (mm/s) at temperature T (C)
The CCAI-calculation can easily be carried out by means of The FUEL OIL Calculation
Program.

Question: Composite Boilers

What is the inherent problem in Composite Boiler?
Answer:
There are different types of composite boilers. Normally one part of the boiler is heated by
means of a fuel oil burner and the other part is heated by the exhaust gases from a diesel
engine.

Heating of one part of a boiler at the time often causes thermal stress that may lead
to leakage.
One single composite boiler does not fulfill normal requirement of redundancy
when the steam is used for essential service purpose.

Question: Steam valves open causing a sudden large load

I have two 82,000 lb/hr natural gas fired boiler that is designed for 300 psig and operating
at 205 psig (saturated). The boilers serve a large campus with numerous buildings, each
with an integrated building management control system. Due to an unresolvable
characteristic of the building control system, occasionally all of the building steam valves
open causing a sudden large load on the boilers that lasts for 20 to 30 minutes. The demand
for steam is not real in that no heat is actually required by the buildings. When this
condition occurs we have a serious water carryover problem. My question is how can we
maintain boiler pressure and water level while either ignoring or controlling the sudden
false load. Our combustion control system is a PLC based system, metered/cross limited
air-fuel ratio , three element drum level and oxygen trim.
Shall we try to correct thorugh the control algorithm or add backpressure control valves. I
look forward to any advise.
Answer:
The steam capacity doesnt seem to be sufficient to supply all the fully open control valves.
First of all recalculate the control valves. Over-sized control valves are very common cause

of problems.

Question: Transport superheated steam

Is it possible to transport superheated steam of the order of 45 t/h at 30 bar pressure and
temp of 300 deg from a aux boiler to a distance of 1.5 Km?
Answer:
Calculate with a velocity of 15 m/s (49 ft/s). To avoid water hammering the pipe-line
should slop slitely downwards in the steam flowing direction. To start up the line you will
need a drain valve on every 30 m (100 ft).