(With careful control it should be possible to operate condensers with a temperature difference between vapour and hot water of less than 10°F with a consequent saving of water or a higher vacuum). BACAZ = &) Chapter XT Comments () Steam and Bagasse We have seen that with 12-5% fibre in cane we get 25t of bagasse, which is sufficient for generating over 60t of steam. ‘This assures an adequate steam supply if vapour bleeding is practised, but it would not be so with a straight evaporator. If the fibre content of the cane were to drop below 11%, the steam situation would, however, become precarious even with a scheme such as that of our Fig. 4. Many who have been troubled with an inadequate steam supply have been induced to improve the situation by increasing the boiler efficiency through the installation of economisers and/or air pre-heaters. The improvement obtainable in this way is, however, not great (with hot water available for boiler feed and with bagasse as fuel), and the cost of such installations—and of their maintenance—is high. It also seems wrong to produce more steam than necessary, though efficiently, only to waste some of it through inefficient utilization of the steam. A factory which has steam troubles, and which is not making good use of the possibilities of vapour bleeding, ought to improve the efficiency of steam utilization before spending money on additions to its boilers. In fact better boiler efficiency will in many cases be obtained when less steam is used and the boilers are not forced. There are special cases when in a cane sugar factory economisers or air heaters may be justified ; namely, when additional steam is needed for sugar refining and/or distilling. However, even in such cases it should be possible—as long as the fibre content of the cane is not abnormally low—to generate sufficient steam for all requirements without having recourse to economisers and/or air heaters, provided all reasonable steps are taken towards a good steam economy. (2) Steam and Power We have shown that with our steam conditions, prime movers of 50% overall efficiency require 31:5 Ib of steam per hph. It is often not realised what the effect of various steam pressures on the one hand, and of superheat on the other, have on this figure. A few examples are given below Steam Steam Back Available Utilise Steam pressure temp. pressure heat heat at required psig °F psig B.Th.U,/Ib, 50% eff. Ib/hph. B.TB.U,/lb. 180 380 (sat) 15 140 70 36-5 180 500 1S 160 80 31-5 180 500 10 172 86 29-5 250 407 (sat) 15 166 83 30-5 250 500 15 180 90 28-0 250 500 10 196 98 26-0 In the previous chapters we have chosen an admission pressure to the prime movers of 180 psig. The reason for this is that boilers operating at 180-200 psig are still in the low pressure range and are therefore less exacting in operation and- maintenance than high Pressure boilers. We have chosen superheat, because without it the quantity of exhaust steam would have been 16% greater, and also because steam turbines would operate less well with saturated steam. 20