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| STEAM SERVICES |
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| Novaspect maintains a staff of 4 senior combustion control engineers and 35 additional support engineers who are experienced in the design, implementation, testing and maintenance of steam generation systems, steam distribution systems, process and comfort steam users, and condensate recovery systems.
Following is a brief portfolio of our capabilities. We maintain the local talent necessary for our clients to enhance safety, assure environmental compliance, increase asset reliability, and improve financial performance through thermal efficiency.
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Steam Generation |
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- Combustion efficiency through control scheme design and boiler tuning
Achieve boiler efficiency gains and meet environmental emissions constraints using appropriate measurement and control techniques for combustion control, and multi-boiler or multi-fuel optimization while meeting steam supply load change and ramp rate performance specifications
- Excess O2 optimization
- Opacity control
- Meeting SOx/NOx environmental compliance
- Biasing of multi-boiler loading for efficiency
- Biasing of multi-fuel loading for efficiency
- Load change responsiveness
- Ramp rate improvement
- Designs for variable BTU fuel
- Burner management
Design proper burner management control systems to assure NFPA compliance for safety, and minimizes burner trips and re-lights
- Burner sequencing schemes
- Minimum fire control
- Flame safety system review and design
- NFPA 85 compliance evaluation
- Spurious burner trip analysis
- Flame instability analysis
- Feedwater delivery and drum level control retrofits
Replace out-dated steam drum level controls with the best available control technology to assure drum level control reliability under all operating conditions and load changes
- Operator alarm management studies
Reduce operator overload by analysis of alarm types and frequencies and implementation of an appropriate alarm management process
- Operational performance logging and reporting design
Utilize existing and augmented performance-based process measurements to view and trend steam generation performance in customized report formats
- Data acquisition and reporting design
Collect and report all data that can be used to analyze equipment reliability and troubleshoot equipment performance
- Environmental monitoring and reporting systems design
Collect all environmental measurement data and implement a report structure that reduces your time required to fill out agency reports
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Steam Distribution |
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- Header pressure disturbance analysis
Determine the nature of common cause disturbances to steam header pressure and eliminate root cause contributors
- Header prioritization and re-balancing
Match multiple steam header pressure conditions against the user needs. Re-balance headers for optimum thermal performance of the steam users. In a steam distribution system with multiple headers of various pressures, biasing header use appropriately to the process steam users and turbine-generators can improve overall energy use and production. Surplussing valves can be utilized to assure steam supply margins are available at all header pressures.
- Designs for abnormal situations
Analyze the potential of special cause disturbances to the steam distribution system and eliminate if possible
- Coordinated control designs to limit operator intervention
Link individual header pressure controls to provide coordinated rebalance of the headers in automatic
- Selection of the proper header pressure regulating devices
Flowing capacity, speed of response, load-related offset, and materials of construction need to be fully analyzed to assure reliability of performance and service life of steam pressure regulation control valves and regulators
- Diagnostic testing and repair of regulating devices and transmitters
Predictive maintenance, rather than run-to-failure, assures steam distribution assets are always available and operating to setpoints
- Steam main condensate removal system design
Avoid water hammer damage, capacity reductions, and thermal inefficiency by properly removing condensate from the steam system
- Air binding analysis
Avoid poor heat exchanger thermal performance by removing air from the steam system
- Steam trap surveys
Properly selecting, installing, testing and maintaining steam traps is crucial to improved energy efficiency
- Application-based trap selection
- Trapping system design
- Trap leakage and mis-operation audits
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Steam Use |
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- Steam conditioning for efficient heat transfer
Matching the correct conditioned steam statepoint against heat exchanger design characteristics assures the maximum heating duty is available at any process heater, unit heater or heat exchanger
- Heat exchanger
and re-boiler optimization
Evaluate the potential for, and eliminate the causes of flooding, air binding, fouling, and other causes of off-spec heat transfer
- Operating within heat exchanger constraints
Establish and control operating excursions which encourage corrosion, tube cracking, tube/plate separation, and drain cooler destruction
- Using trap “flash steam” for economy
Recover the thermal value of “flash steam” produced by trapped drains by use in light duty heat transfer applications
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Condensate Recovery |
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- Economic evaluations for recovery
Balance the capital cost and ongoing maintenance costs for recovering condensate for return to the boiler against the cost of steam and water treatment chemicals to make cold, raw water suitable for use as feedwater
- Redesign for stall, negative pressure differential and vacuum conditions
Analyze the condensate recovery system for volume constraints caused by poor system design and operation
- Pumped and power-trapped condensate return system design
Apply proper devices to overcome condensate return volume constraints
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