Water droplets will be entrained in the steam if your steam traps do not remove water from your steam system. This water can inflict wear and tear on internal plant components, resulting in costly repairs and even putting plant staff in danger.    

Water that hasn’t been evacuated from the steam trap system collects in the system’s low points and on plant equipment. Heat exchangers are one such use. This deposit will cover heat exchanger tubes, restricting heat transfer. Less heat transmission may cause your process to slow down, which will negatively affect both product quality and throughput. In one case, a tyre manufacturer could not manage the temperature of their production process due to a steam trap malfunction. When the process control temperature gets out of tolerance, whole batches had to be reprocessed, which cost millions of dollars.

Condensate at saturation temperature is vulnerable to flashing to steam if system pressure lowers. When the condensate flashes, any valve opening has the potential to lose pressure, resulting in significant pressure surges in steam traps. This can result in component and pipe failure, placing plant people and equipment in danger.       

The primary effect of malfunctioning steam traps on industrial facilities

Steam is continually passed through when steam traps fail in the open or blow-by state. Therefore, traps are designed with an interior aperture to reduce steam loss, although they can still be considerable. 

Fuel prices have risen.

The other type of steam trap failure mode is a failed open or “blow-by” scenario in which the trap continually passes steam. While this does not directly threaten the process or the safety of plant staff, it has a significant financial impact on the facility’s bottom line. This is because each steam trap has an interior opening that restricts the quantity of steam/condensate that may travel through it while it is open. Even yet, steam traps on big, high-pressure steam lines may pass more than 600lbm/hr of steam. Depending upon the cost of steam at a plant, this can cost up to $30,000 per year.     

Increased boiler load:      

The quantity of steam leaks increases as plants get old, and plant efficiency falls. This rise in load is commonly referred to as “phantom” load. One executive at a refining firm calculated that 20% of his boiler steam production went to this phantom load, with the majority of it seeping through broken steam traps. Unless they had a plant to enhance the health of the steam trap system, they would have to make a big expenditure to raise the capacity of their boilers or possibly install another boiler.    

Reducing steam loss via steam traps can help to minimize phantom load and eliminate the need for capacity increases. Unfortunately, many operators opt to open the bypass of failing cold steam traps due to the safety and process difficulties produced by failed closed steam traps. While this lessens the safety and process effect of the failure, it increases the fuel required by the boiler and consumes any extra capacity. This has a financial impact on your fuel bill and an environmental impact due to the increased use of fossil fuels.

According to the United States Energy Information Administration, industrial manufacturers require more energy than the combined transportation, residential, and commercial sectors. As a result, the industrial sector consumes around 30 trillion BTUs of energy every year. In addition, many sectors use energy-intensive processes, including chemicals, refining, mining and metals, and pulp and paper, to mention a few.

One technique to increase overall efficiency is to optimize steam utilization. These systems include steam traps to remove condensation from the pipework, protecting plant equipment and allowing for the effective functioning of plant equipment and operations.

When they fail, it has a big impact. The typical technique of assessing the status of such traps is to hire a third-party agency to come in and perform manual audits. These audits include employing ultrasonic and temperature sensors to assess the quality of each steam trap.

This approach has downsides since it just examines a brief snapshot of the process and frequently fails to discover failed traps. Furthermore, yearly audits expose the plant operator to extended periods of failing traps between examinations.

Wireless transmitter technology enables low-cost continuous monitoring of steam traps. As a result, the days of evaluating flow noise and making rapid decisions on the state of the trap are coming to an end.

The dependability of steam traps decreases as plants age. During steam trap audits, most process plants discover failure rates of up to 35%. This is frequently an indicator that the number of failed traps increases over time, rather than that the underlying yearly failure rate is extremely high.

It is difficult to evaluate the cost impact of failing steam traps. However, anecdotal evidence abounds, ranging from steam line ruptures costing millions of dollars or euros to unforeseen interruptions to replacing equipment.

A huge European pharmaceutical firm encountered a significant water hammer due to four clogged steam traps. The damage necessitated a 6-hour work stoppage and €220,000 in repairs. Other potentially harmful situations include:

  • Plant staff and equipment are at risk of injury.
  • Increased maintenance expenses have a negative influence on plant throughput and quality.
  • increased fuel usage
  • Reduced ability to achieve environmental norms and goals

    Conclusion:

    The steam that works properly opens to discharge condensate and closes automatically when steam is present. Failed traps waste fuel, decrease efficiency, raise production costs, and jeopardize the overall integrity of the steam and condensate systems. Do you need an audit to inspect and fix failed steam traps? Contact Stopleakloss today! Reduce and fix the impact of failed steam traps with Stopleakloss before it impacts your pockets!