No matter what you’re using your boiler for, you want it to be efficient. If you’re operating a boiler in a typical commercial setting like a factory or warehouse, or if you’re supplying a hospital, refinery, or manufacturing plant, that boiler is running pretty much around the clock. The more efficient that boiler is, the less it’s going to cost every day it runs. While efficiency has a lot to do with the age and design of the boiler, there are a lot of other factors that can affect the amount of heat that actually does what it’s supposed to (make steam) and the amount that is lost to the environment.
KEEP IT RUNNING WELL
The first and most important thing that you can do to preserve your boiler’s efficiency is to treat it right. That means regular maintenance and inspections by trained boiler professionals. A boiler is like any other type of machine out there. As it operates, the component parts can wear out, linkages can stretch, valve seats can shift, servos can become slightly misaligned, and so on. There are countless ways that a perfectly efficient boiler can start to lose its peak capacity in tiny amounts, but those tiny amounts add up over time.
If you get your boiler regularly inspected and maintained, you’ll continue to get as much steam out of every fuel dollar as you can. So while inspections aren’t free, they’re one of the best investments you can make in preserving your boiler’s life, and spending less money on fueling it every minute it operates.
PLAYING YOUR TUNE
Proper combustion is also a huge factor in preserving the efficiency of a boiler. In order to get the most heat out of every ounce of fuel, that fuel has to be properly and thoroughly mixed with oxygen so that it will burn efficiently. Tuning your burners to the ideal fuel/air mixture will help ensure that the fuel burns completely, and it burns evenly, so it can supply as much useable heat as possible when your boiler’s furnace is firing. Today’s modern boiler monitoring systems do a great job of combustion monitoring, from measuring fuel to firing rate ratios to maintaining oxygen trim to supply just the right amount of air. But even older boilers can benefit from a proper combustion tuning performed by a professional.
RECLAIM THE HEAT
Another way to preserve and/or increase efficiency is to reclaim heat that would have otherwise been lost to normal boiler operation. Remember, every pound of steam needs a certain amount of heat to be created. That heat doesn’t all have to come from the furnace, either. Modern boiler systems use economizers to reclaim heat from the exhaust stack, using that heat to pre-warm the water before it enters the pressure vessel. Since the water is already warm when it enters the pressure vessel, the burners have to do less work getting the water hot enough to change phases into steam. Modern boilers can even reclaim heat from blowdowns, as well, which helps to squeeze every cent out of every fuel dollar.
For the same reason, boilers with proper condensate return systems also tend to operate with greater efficiency than those that rely on constant feedwater. Since the condensate has some latent heat left in it even after it coalesces into water, it’ll take less fuel to get it up to steam-making temperature.
PUMP PROPERLY
Another way that a boiler system can be made more efficient is using variable-speed pumps. If your pump is running at full speed all the time you are wasting electricity. If you add a variable-speed drive to your pump motor, you only run the pump at the speed required to feed the boiler at the given firing rate. No more, no less. This also saves on wear and tear on the pump itself.
TREAT IT RIGHT
You’ve heard us talk about water treatment many times before when it comes to preserving your boiler’s longevity, but water treatment is also highly relevant to efficiency as well. By properly softening and treating the water in your boiler, you prevent scale from building up. If it’s allowed to collect, that scale will end up impeding the heat transfer between your boiler’s furnace and pressure vessel. That means you’ll have to spend more money in fuel to overcome that heat resistance caused by the scale. But if you don’t allow the scale to develop in the first place, it won’t end up costing you extra fuel dollars. So keep that water treated properly.
WRAP STAR
Insulation is another big step to increasing or preserving efficiency. All of the steam components are made of metal, and metal tends to transfer and radiate heat. If that escaping heat is allowed to contact the air, it’ll be lost to the atmosphere. By wrapping your boiler’s pressure vessel, pipework, valves, fittings, and water lines in insulation, that heat can be kept inside where it belongs, so it can do the job you’re paying it to do.
On a side note, that insulation can actually be a lifesaver in cold weather, too. By protecting the boiler’s components from the cold, proper insulation can not only preserve efficiency, it can save your boiler from freeze-related damage.
Whatever your boiler needs to run at its best, WARE has got you covered. We have the professionals with the experience to properly tune, tweak, and maintain your boiler. We also have the extra equipment and parts it takes to get more heat out of every dollar you spend on fuel, and the pros to install it. Of course, if you’d like to learn more about how your boiler operates, so you can get a better idea of how fuel, heat, water, air, and exhaust all interrelate, consider taking a few in-person or online courses at WARE’s Boiler University, all taught by seasoned pros with decades of boiler experience. Whatever you need, WARE is here to help. Just let us know.