trap selction on holiday weekend

nolamike

Hey y'all

So I have to work the weekend in in order to get into production by Tuesday. I admittedly don't know much about traps and steam and what I do know has just made it more confusing. I'm the repair guy so its up to me to fix it. What we have is a 1800 gallon tank with a set of coils  that's heated to near boiling. The past couple of weeks the production run has gone from 20 hours run time to like 35. culprit : bad steam trap . I got a new one but it seems wrong to me. We had a 3/4 inverted bucket one on there. that didn't seem right either. I have a new 2" f&t trap that I was given to replace it. I have a boiler that 998mbh running at 10psi, have about 5psi after the exchanger before the trap. and a 6 foot lift to the return line. (that will soon become 10' because the output of the coils is not at the bottom).

Now when this is running it make a lot of condensate esp on start up. it takes about 5 hours to get it up to 180. I not sure of my condensate load. came up with 880lbs/ hr but that was with fuzzy numbers.

So the question is my new trap right?    Concerned  about water hammer , we have a good bit of it. Is there a good way to run it without a trap until we can find a good boiler guy.

thanks so much

nicholas bonham-carter

Weekend steam repair

How is the air getting out of the coil?

Many traps will have trouble functioning at pressure above 3 psi--NBC

JStar

Trap

Luckily, you only need 4.5 pounds of pressure to lift the condensate 10 feet. I would stick with a bucket trap. It is more robust, and less likely to be damaged by water hammer.



As NBC touched upon, it would be a good idea to assess the venting as well. Could be part of the reason for such an increase in run time.



Where are you located? We may know somebody in your area.

nolamike

Trap

Right now it just gets purged manually at start up. That's on the list.

I'm in new Orleans , not much call heat down here , we've got plenty enough already

Rod

Trap Info

Hi- As a homeowner i don't have that much experience with traps so can't give you much help in that area. Here are some links I collected that might be of help to you.

Source for complete traps & parts:

State Supply

http://www.statesupply.com/steamTraps.jsp



Rebuild parts for Steam Traps (Thermostatic,  F&T)

Barnes & Jones

http://www.barnesandjones.com/



Tunstall

http://www.tunstall-inc.com/tunstallsteam.html



I've also attached a manual on steam traps  (Hoffman Specialties HS-203(C) )

which I don't believe it is in print any more. It has a lot of info on steam traps.

- Rod

nolamike

traps

Thanks for the comments and the links. got it back working with the old trap.going to return the one I bought . Hopefully boiler guy will come in soon

mike