“steam at various What is a boiler? Essentially, a boiler is a container into which water can be {fed and, by the application of heat, evaporated continuously into steam. In early designs the boiler was a simple shell with 4 feed pipe and steam outlet, mounted on a brick setting. Fuel ‘vas burned on a grate within the setting and the heat 30 re- eased was directed over the lower shell surface hefore most of it went out the flac, Designers soon learned that heating a single large vessel ‘of water was remarkably inefficient, thet it was nocessary to ‘bring more of the water into close contact with the heat. One FUure ent f a ‘way todo this is to direct the bot combustion products through tubes within the boiler shell, Such a firetube design (above, left) not only inereases the heat surface exposed to the watery bbut also tends to distribute steam formation more uniformly throughout the mass of water. In contrast to the firetube idea, watertube designs feature ‘one or more relatively small drums with a multiplicity of tubes in which watersteam mizture circulates, Heat flows from out. side tubes to mixture. This subdivision of pressure parts makes large capacities and high pressures possible. Refresh your knowledge of such basic elements of steam generation as steam properties, heat transfer and circulation Since steam generation is the business of turning water into steam by application of heat, first we need to know something about the factors involved in this process. As the charts below illustrate, heating water at any sziven pressure will eventually cause it to boil, and steam Will he released. The heat required to bring the water from 32 F (base point for all water and steam properties) to the boiling point is the enthalpy of the liquid and is meas ured in Bu per Ib Saturation. When water is boiling, both water and steam have the same temperature, called the saturation ten: perature. For each boiling pressure there is only one satur ation temperature and vice versa, As we have seen, during, the boil though heat is being added. The heat is, of course, bein used to change the water from the liquid to the vapor state This heat, in Btu per Ih, is the enthalpy of evaporation Enthalpy of the saturated steam is enthalpy of saturated process temperature remains constant, even liquid plus enthalpy of evaporation; that is, total heat added to bring water at 32 F up to steam at a ziven state What happens to 12] @ pound of water ‘& col when changed to & ¢co| © | 20] sa pressure levels s £ i= é Entaipy, Bu pr tb If we heat a pound of water in a cylinder with various pressures applied to the piston, we find that the same general sequence of events occurs at each pressure level. First, water temperature rises and its volume increases slightly! Then boiling liegins, the volume increases greatly, and the tempera- Ea Mater Boling ware ever Boing water el * , u 200) 0 800 000 OO foo 29 eat ade Entalpy, Btu per tb ‘ure stays constant, When all the water has changed to steam, the volume continues to increase on further heating and the temperature rises, This is called superheating, : ‘The charts above demonstrate graphically that, as pressure increases, amount of heat required to bring water to the boil.Superheating. As long as steam and water are in con: tact, temperature will remain the same — the saturation temperature for the given pressure, If we want to raise the temperature of the steam, we must superheat it — heat it out of contact with water. The enthalpy of the stearn will increase hy the amount of Btu added per Tb, and the tem: perature will rise. Rate at which temperature rises depends to some degtee on the pressure. This ean be seen in charts below where shape of superheated steam lines varies at the different pressure levels. Critical point. The charts below also reveal that there is a point where water turns into steam without boiling ‘This occurs at @ temperature of 705.4 F and a pressure of 106.2 Ib per sq in, absolute, Parenthetically, the current standard abbreviation for Ib per sq in. is psi. When this is, ‘measured on a gaze (psig), it represents pressure above atmospheric (111696 psi, usually rounded off to 14.7) Absolute pressure is thus gage pressure plus 14.696 and is designated psia Steam tables. Since the properties of steam and water are definitively fixed by nature, they can be measured and tabulated. The data most widely used in the U.S. are found in “Thermodynamic Properties of Steam" by Joseph H Keenan and Frederick G Keyes (published by John Wiley & Sons). This contains data on saturated water and steam, organized by both temperature and pressure, and on, superheated vapor up to temperatures of 1600 F and pres sures to 5500 psia. For each condition, specific volume, enthalpy, entropy and internal energy are given Because of the tend to higher pressures for steam gen: eration and utilization, the present upper limit of 5500 psia will soon be inadequate. New tables are currently being worked out by an international commission; these will sam properties up to 15,000 psa, seater carry energy into the unit, various Q every toss interchanges take place, and the wetal 1 uueege Peele "Since al energy ont mist equal en: ergy in, other outpals appear as losses. ‘These include energy lost in gas and foistufe 10 the stack, unbumed com. Justibles, and heat radiated front unit. steam by weight in the steam.water mixture, the “dryness- fraction” mentioned before, at various points in the circuit ‘Once that approximation is made, relationship between these variables is governed by certain dimensionless nun bers which have become the indispensable tool of the hydraulic engineer, Most commonly used among. these numbers and applied to the as side as well as the steam side of boiler surfaces is the Reynolds number. This brings into the picture mass-flow, tube diameter, fluid velocity and viscosity all factors inflow resistance In contrast to natural citculation and forced circulation designs — in which more water is cireulated than steam is generated and a drum or drums serve as a collecting and steam-releasing: point — the once-through design consists n theory, of a single tube (no drum) into which goes feed water and out of which comes saturated or superheated steam. In actual units, of course, the theoretical single circuit becomes a number of parallel circuits, ' At pressures below critical, a oncethrough unit may have a separator to deliver saturated steam to the super: heater and to return collected moisture to the feedpump, suction, as in Fig. 18, The once-through cyele is, of course, ideally suited for pressures above the critical point where water turns to steam without actually boiling. As will be explained in more detail when supercritical units are dis. cussed (pp $ 35S such units may require special pro: visions for satisfactory operation and control at low loads. This may be accomplished by a bypass hookup, Fig, 19, or by providing a fore recireulation system to take over automatically during low-flow periods, Fig. 20. The oldest measure of steam-generator capacity is the boiler horsepower, the amount of steam requited to gen: erate one horsepower in a typical steam engzine of the time the unit was adopted. After a number of changes in nu ‘merical values, itis now defined as the ability to evaporate 34.5 Ih of wates to steam from and at 212 B This still used fas the common measure of capacity for small boilers, Larger boiler capacity is almost invariably given in Ib of steam evaporated per hr, with the steam conditions speci fied. Maximum continuous rating is the hourly evaporation that can be maintained for 24 hours, and a further rating. fon the basis of a 2-hour peak output may he given, Recent trend is toward rating large boilers in kw or mv of the turbine generator, thus including work done by reheaterow Foe gos ane A steam-generating unit ‘eee, coordinates many elements ler” is broadly used, ©) Her While the term “bi it should apply, striely speaking, only to the elements in which a change of state takes place. The term “steamgen- erator” is also used for the many com: Dinations of heating surfaces, such ‘borers ® ce eet ete tee COG bap rgiepan rey Goering init cise oftacamaer Sect Sera eine ‘elm Soe Tee Saco bedsstangeeucy Ge eles ae Poulieee epee oe cee ee tion of many elements, all of which must. eheater- ae ee una ie se Betis peice Cala oa Wai ean KS Sle hr pa ininhen at ay Souegeee fouilie eaetigerate ase quate draft, for example, or fueL-bure ‘ng equipment that does not supply the ue hheat release on which, steam-generator dcsen wae radiated, Ts there isan Rh increasing tendency for the manufae- turer of the steam generator to be re- sponsible for coordinating entire unit, Numbers on drawing correspond 40 enupnent, imbers on diagram on opposite page, identifying energy inputs aud outputs unit would be 100% efficent if it vale of the fuel. The fuel 1, however, cannot dey A steam ger absorbed the enti bur uipment and furn, the full value of the fuel, and thus the steam generator starts with one strike on it. Theoretically, the stean ‘ney is the ratio of the heat absorbed by the feedwater to the heat released in the furnace, Because itis dliffeult in practive to separate furnace losses from steamy ysis, it is over all efficiency that is of interest, itis customary to express h _enterator losses and beeause, in the bast Mteam-zenerating unit efficiency as the in the steam to heat input in the fuel. atio of heat output, FEEC Y ANB LOS: uzram_on opposite paxe shows energy changes th take place in a steam-zenerating wil, Energy enters the unit in fuel and, measured above a hase of 32 F, in incom. ing combustion air and feedwater, It eaves as useful out pput (steam from the supetheater and reheater! and losses, Dave © S Some losses can be reduced by good design and opera: ‘others cannot. The major loss is heat going up the stack, The biggest part of this is dry.gas loss (heat repre= sented hy so many Ib of flue gas at some temperature above standard atmospheric conditions|, This can be reduced by. cutting down the amount (reduc uz excess air) or by loweting the temperature (adding more heating surface, for example). Another part of the stack loss is represented by the heat absorbed in evaporating and superheating, ‘moisture that comes in with the fuel and supetheatin ‘moisture in the combustion aie, Moisture also results from the burning of hydrogen in the fuel. Flue gas may also ‘contain some unburned combustible All other losses are negligible in comparison with what 20s up the stack. Where solid fuel is fired, some unburned oor partly burned combustibles are lost in the ashpit, and some heat loss is represented hy the hot ash itself. Addi jonal small amounts of heat are lost by radiation from the steam genes unit or easing and by blowdown from dl