Boiler Water Flow Measurements With Prosonic A 'Snap'

In today’s energy conscious world most everyone associated with utilities or industrial plants are investigating how to make their process more efficient and more economic to operate. A common practice has been to install boiler efficiency monitoring systems that acquire multitudes of process data from a boiler and do real time calculations on the efficiency of the machine. Some of the important parameters measured around boilers are main boiler feed water, condensate return and make-up water as well as fuel flow, level, pressure, temperature, water analysis and others.

Using ultrasonic transit time clamp-on non intrusive technology is an ideal solution for all the water flows because there is no need for pipe modifications, shut-downs and expensive labor costs. Today’s clamp on technology can be as portable or as permanent as a customer desires with new age coupling pastes from basic grease to advanced adhesives that make the transducer connection to the pipe wall as permanent as welding.

Prominent paper and beverage manufacturers are using the Proline Prosonic 93P transducers to measure boiler feed water,condensate return and make up water to better understand the operation and efficiency of their system. In many cases calculations performed by the operating engineers find losses or excess of steam that are inconsistent with the observed and expected operation of the boiler. Water flow into a boiler is also a safety issue and if volumes fall below acceptable limits, the unit needs to be taken off line for investigation, resulting in production losses. Depending on the size of the facility and their steam needs the water flows to the boiler are typically found in 1 ½” pipes to as large as 12” pipes. Most of the time the piping is constructed of carbon steel, usually schedule 80 or higher due to the operating pressures and elevated temperatures. In most cases the boiler feed water as well as condensate return will range from 150 to 300°F depending on the boiler, operating conditions and system pressure. Make up de-mineralized water may be found in stainless steel pipes rather than carbon and may range in temperature from ambient to as high as 200°F.