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5. REDUCED BLOWDOWN
Blowdown is a concern that needs to be addressed in every boiler design. As water makes the transition into steam, any impurities that were present in your feedwater are left behind, and these dissolved solids will begin to accumulate inside your boiler. As time passes, this can result in a variety of problems, including scaling, corrosion, and carryover. In order to minimize this risk, water within your boiler is periodically flushed from the system, carrying away these damaging elements.
While this practice is a necessity, the fact remains that the water you just removed from your system is water that you have paid for. You paid to have it run to your plant, paid to have it chemically treated, and paid to have it heated, but now it’s being dumped down the drain. As such, having a boiler with lower blowdown rates results in immediate direct savings to its owner.
Clayton Steam Generators have been designed with this factor in mind. The technology we use allows for lower levels of blowdown, and under typical circumstances a Clayton has less than one tenth of the blowdown of our competitors. How are we able to do this? Once again, it comes down to the design of our Steam Separator.
As this impure water arrives in the Separator, it does so combined with steam. As this mixture is separated and the steam rises to be used in your facility, the remaining water falls to the bottom and is collected. Rather than the conventional method of immediately dumping this water down the drain, the Clayton Steam Separator controls the levels of dissolved and suspended solids by condensing them, which allows for the majority of this water to be returned to the feedwater tank and reused.
What then remains is closely monitored, and once this concentration of impure water reaches a set level, it is flushed from the system and removed. This means less overall blowdown, and by ejecting only a small amount of undesirable water from your system, costs are reduced on water, fuel, and chemical treatment.
You already paid for this water, so you might as well get the most out of it. Clayton’s design means less blowdown, and less blowdown means greater savings.