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Posted by David Townsend on February 16, 2010 at 19:27:14:
I have an industrial boiler application at a small polymer production plant that requires a low steam flow and a high steam pressure. The required steam pressure is well above the capabilities of a Scotch firetube boiler. The required steam production is on the very low end of the capability of the typical watertube boiler. With the smallest of B&W's watertube boilers, the unit would be operating at 15% of capacity most of the time.
This set of operating conditions has led me to focus on the Clayton Steam Generator as the possible best fit for the application. This will be a 2 boiler installation in a 24x7 continuous polymer production plant and the boilers must be very reliable. My intention is to operate both boilers online at about 50% of capacity. If one boiler trips, the other boiler fires-out. Loss of steam in this plant causes the polymer product to go solid in places where we don't want it to and it makes a real mess.
I'm looking for some input from those of you that have experience operating Clayton Steam Generators. I'm interested in reliability information - everything from causes of boiler trips, fouling, instrumentation problems, problems with the positive displacement feed pumps, any issues related to the low NOx burner, and in general any quality problems you had with the Clayton Steam Generators.
One specific concern that I have is related to the use of "blind switches" instead of transmitters on initiators that will trip the boiler. Those of you that have experience operating Clayton Steam Generators, have you had instrumentation failures that have caused boiler trips? Has the use of switches rather than transmitters caused problems?
Do any of you have experience with Clayton's low NOx burner combined with FGR? Are they able to meet the NOx limits that they claim they can. I've had lots of experience with low NOx and ultra low NOx burners and I know that some don't perform in the real world as well as they do in the brochures. I don't want to have to add an SCR after 2 months of operation.
Thanks for any input you can give me on your experience with Clayton Steam Generators.
David