![]() Over the years, great strides have been made in tube-cleaning technology. Each air motor was good for only a narrow range of tube sizes, so if the user had many tube sizes to clean, he had to have multiple air motors, which drove up the cost. The entire motor/cutter assembly was then fed manually through the tubes and cleaning was performed dry, followed by a flushing with a water hose. A well-managed water treatment program is essential to minimizing scale deposits.Įarly watertube cleaning devices used cylindrical air motors fitted with complicated cutter heads fastened to the end of a heavy compressed air hose. Scale is formed when water is heated and suspended solids in the water precipitate out onto the heating surfaces. The amount and nature of the scale are determined by the water quality and the effectiveness of water treatment. In addition, where firetube boilers commonly have only soot and ash to be removed, watertubes commonly have scale deposits that adhere stubbornly to the tubes. Though some have straight tubes, which can be cleaned as described above, most watertube boiler tubes have bends in them, making them more difficult to clean. Most watertube boilers have tubes in a more or less vertical position. The backbreaking effort went on for hours, followed by the immense task of individually vacuuming each tube and cleaning up the boiler room. Brushes fastened to long, heavy metal rods were manually pushed and pulled through the soot laden boiler tubes, resulting in clouds of soot filling the air and settling on every surface in the room. In most cases, tube cleaning was strictly a manual operation requiring a great deal of time, labor, mess, and inconvenience. It took longer to clean the floor than the tubes. Yes, the tubes were cleaned, but the boiler room was left with a layer of black mud on the floor. One can imagine the mess this left behind. Today, soot blowers are used mainly in large power utility boilers where the smoke stacks are equipped with scrubbers and other environmental devices.Īnother tube cleaning method practiced by some boiler technicians was washing out the tubes using a fire hose. Soot was simply blown out through the smoke stack and into the atmosphere - a practice that is frowned upon today. They were mounted in a way that allowed nozzles to be maneuvered to blow steam or air through each tube. ![]() Twenty-plus years ago, one popular method was the use of soot blowers: steel tubes fitted with blowing nozzles that were mounted on the tube sheet of the boiler. Over the years, several methods have been developed for cleaning boiler firetubes. That’s a pretty good argument for regular tube cleaning. For every 40F rise in stack temperature, boiler efficiency is reduced by 1%. As the layer of soot builds up, the stack temperature rises. coating of soot can accumulate in a firetube boiler in just two weeks, resulting in a heat loss of 47% and an increase in fuel consumption of 812%. Soot actually has five times the insulating capacity of asbestos.įor example, a 18-in. If they aren’t, boiler efficiency is sacrificed and fuel wasted. No matter what fuel is used, the tubes need to be cleaned regularly. ![]() This results in soot and scale deposits accumulating within the tubes. In the firetube boiler, water surrounds the tubes and hot gasses travel through them. In most areas, watertube boiler plants must have licensed stationary engineers on hand at all times, and maintenance is usually performed by in-house personnel. In the watertube boiler, water is carried in the tubes and heated until it becomes high pressure steam. There are two types of tubular boilers: firetube and watertube.
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