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Steam boiler help


clwestphal

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I contracted with a local boiler guy for a heat exchanger and steam boiler. They recommended a Crown. They put in a 227K btu

boiler and a 250K btu heat exchanger. The problem is the pressure goes up to 9 psi and down to 7psi the way it should, then it goes down to zero. Had engineer in to see what the problem is. He stated that the boiler is undersized. Great. Anyway, the contractor wants to put in a buffer tank to expand capacity of the boiler tank. Reasonable one would think. He wants 4500.00 to do it, which is half the cost of the boiler.

Does anyone have any suggestions? The boiler going down to zero is no big deal other than wasted time when mashing, but when distilling it causes a problem by taking the heat off the still, thus stopping the output.

Any help would be appreciated.

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a little more information possibly

what size and style of vessel are you trying to heat?

I've seen similar issues with properly sized steam boilers that were set up incorrectly, most common issue is, controls systems set up for steam heating buildings, not running a distillery.

in the case I mentioned, it all came down to how the system cycled. so chat with your manufacturer and explain the usage to them, they could tell you if its a control issue, setup issue or sizing issue.

Steve

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The pre and post purge cycles could be too long in time allowing to use up all of the available pressure in the boiler. Some boilers can have the chip changed and others have dip switches. When we fired our boiler there was a 60 second pre purge and a 90 second post purge. And we could strip our boiler of pressure within two minutes during these cycles. Called peerless tech Dept and sent us a new chip. We dropped both settings and it now works like a champ. Do you have a high / low fire boiler? As a disclaimer one of our other company's is oil & propane sales and service and we installed in house.

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I have a Crown BSI 227. Runs great. There is a function that shuts it down every 20 min for 90 sec. It's to assure there is no foaming which could give the low water cut off a false reading and dry fire. There is a work around for it. PM me if you want.

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Both really great responses - I'll second for the pre and post flow making a real impact. While we don't go to zero, under high load it will absolutely cause a wider waver in the header pressure.

Also, I asked about the heat exchanger because we use a tube-in-shell for on-demand hot water. Our heat exchanger is somewhat oversized as well. We did need to put a globe valve on the steam input line to throttle the steam, since the beast could consume all the steam you could throw at it. While it's nice to be able to pull unlimited amounts of 180F water - if you had tried to do it while distilling, the pressure would drop like a rock. By cutting down the steam flow with the globe valve, it's not nearly as bad. It's not that our boiler is undersized (we're 16hp), but that the heat exchanger is oversized.

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Thanks for the help. I contacted Crown and they told me to use a different Honeywell pressure controller so that's what I'm doing hoping that it will help.

It is a tube in shell heat exchanger. I'm using it to heat a 300 gallon mash tank and a 200 gallon still.

That's the problem going with a local contractor. I should have called one of the national dealers that specialize in distilling. Live and learn.

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We are going with a Crown boiler as well for out 350 gallon still. From my conversation with Crown's tech help, the BSI distillery's and breweries are new territory for them. The BSI line is a residential system that has worked for breweries but is undersized to the distillery industry at stills in the 300 gallon range. Their commercial series 24 is better suited to the job.

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