High pressure steam to hot water conversion

malsupco

I am looking at a project that is about 30 years old. It is a catering facility. The existing boiler is 60 hp 285 sq ft heating surface running at 50 psi steam. The steam is used for the heating the building,(fan coils) laundry, soup kettles and coffee makers, and DHW (thru a steam coil in a storage tank). There a various prv's at all the locations. Would conversion to a hot water system using the existing piping be a option to consider? I have been looking for the high pressure equipment to replace the existing boiler (That needs to be built in place) but finding a company that does that is difficult. All the equipment that requires the steam can be replaced.

Jamie Hall

It's always an option. However... you would need to check sizing, if nothing else, very carefully indeed. The reason being that steam -- particularly high pressure steam -- carries a lot more heat at a much higher temperature than you could get with hot water. The pipes will have been sized for that. The fan coils and DHW will have been sized for that. It may be that the laundry and the soup kettles need higher temperatures to meet sanitizing requirements.

A lot of factors involved.

Another option to consider would be going to low pressure steam system. Again, some size checking will be in order, and checking the pressure requirements on the various things attached, but it might be a lot easier to find an adequate boiler...

malsupco

My concern going to low pressure is all the building piping was originally sized for high pressure.

jumper

Depends on how long you want pipes to last. You can always increase flow rate of HHW. Why do you want to switch? There are compact boilers available. Have you talked to Lattner?

malsupco

boiler needs to be fabricated on site.

Steamhead

malsupco said:

boiler needs to be fabricated on site.

Why?