Steam Boiler Sizing

[stevevanderpol]

We are looking to heat a 660 gallon still and 500 Gallon mash kettle with low pressure steam simultaneously and attempting to appropriately size our boiler. What information do we need to provide our boiler vendor to help them size the system? I presume length and number of runs as well as target temps for the mash should be enough but we don't seem to be getting a sound answer. Any advice on the best way to calculate this?

[Silk City Distillers]

Your equipment manufacturer should be providing you with boiler sizing specifications, or at least the necessary parameters for an engineer to size the boiler appropriately. Otherwise, assumptions will need to be made.

Approximately 1000-2000 BTU per gallon is the ballpark that I've seen from manufacturers. There are some that recommend even higher, although there have been a few folks here that have indicated that going under 1000 is probably a bad idea. Realize this range is wide enough to drive a truck through in your capacities - 1.2mbtu to 2.4mbtu (35-70hp). However, at that size, there is going to be little difference in total installation cost.

Staggering startup can significantly impact sizing, keep that in mind.

[Artisan Still Design]

it depends on how efficient your steam jacket is, we recommend as a minimum on our systems 1,000 BTUS per gallon, however they are efficient enough to handle 3x that

but the math says 1.2 million Btus to heat both concurrently and reach boil in approximately 1 hour.

[Natrat]

I concur with Steve. 1.2 million BTUs is about what I get. Depending on how far your boiler will be from your equipment and the type of install, I would probably shop for a 1.5 million BTU boiler to make up for potential losses.

Dan