Some common causes of low water conditions include:
• Feedwater pump failure
• Control valve failure
• Loss of water to the deaerator or make-up water system
• Drum level controller failure
• Drum level controller inadvertently left in “manual” position
• Loss of plant air pressure to the control valve actuator
• Safety valve lifting
• Wide variations or sudden changes in steam load
Avoiding the above conditions is critical to ensuring safe and reliable boiler operation. Maintenance, inspection, and operational logs are recommended and required by insurance companies. These records not only help determine boiler performance trends, but also keep operators focused on the safe performance of the boiler and auxiliary plant equipment. To this end, unnecessary boiler downtime (together with the loss of plant production) and lost time accidents are avoided.
The only way to avoid premature downtime and accidents (in the worst cases) is to make certain that operators and plant owners are committed to an on-going operational and preventative maintenance programs. The Hartford Steam Boiler website www.hsb.com is a good resource. Turning a blind eye to safe boiler operations puts operators, company employees, and equipment at unnecessary risk.
Edited from Nationwide Blog
Other than being inefficient, oversized boilers run in shorter cycles, wearing down their components and reducing their service life.
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