Steam for Brewing & Distilling vs. Steam for Comfort Heating

RayWohlfarth

Steam is steam right? In this months column, I talk about how steam systems for each application is different. Steam systems, brewing and Space heating

EBEBRATT-Ed

All true.

Anything process is a lot different from normal heating and cooking. I have seen contractors put standard cooling units into computer rooms and labs and think they were going to work….They will after you spend all the $$$ to add controls, humidification, dehumidification etc etc and they end up spending more $$$ that if they bought the right unit.

jumper

For a large facility Ray is correct to advise not to go cheapo. For small process work, if 10 psi suffices; or scalding & sterilization, a cheapo atmospheric may suffice. I've seen businesses forgo water treatment so that boiler's lifetime………..

RayWohlfarth

I had a customer buy a small condensate tank instead of a boiler feed systems for a commercial steam system. He wired it like a boiler feed system As you can imagine, it didnt work well

jumper

Would a larger tank have worked?

EdTheHeaterMan

Ray, I replaced a steam boiler system in a church that had all the “wrong” components—but it was working fine. By that, I mean it had three zone valves: two on 3-inch steam mains and one on a 2-inch main feeding a smaller zone. Since it worked with the old boiler, I replaced the old Honeywell threaded valves with new, lower-cost flanged valves.

Another issue was that the old boiler used a condensate return pump. The new boiler had the same BTU capacity but much less water content, so I rewired the pump to function as a feed pump, without increasing the tank size. There were some other oddities that were part of this job but those two are the big issues I remember.

I consulted with John McGarry from Weil-McLain on the sizing and design. We were both amazed that the old boiler had operated so flawlessly and without banging.

The only addition I made was a tankless coil to provide a very small baseboard loop for two offices and two restrooms. The restrooms needed heat whenever any steam zone was calling, but their radiators were tied into the largest zone. So that meant that using only the smallest zone, the larges zone was always operated at the same time. Where was the savings in that?

After commissioning the system, I kept my fingers crossed that the zone valves wouldn’t cause problems on the newer, smaller boiler and that the pump wouldn’t require a larger tank. I got lucky on both counts—the system is still running as I redesigned it 25 years later.

Sometimes you can get away with cutting a corner or two—but be prepared to go back and square it off if you guessed wrong.