A boiler is a device for generating steam, which consists of two principal parts: the furnace,

which provides heat, usually by burning a fuel, and the boiler proper, a device in which the heat
changes water into steam. The steam or hot fluid is then recirculated out of the boiler for use in
various processes in heating applications.

The water circuit of a water boiler can be summarized by the following pictures:

The boiler receives the feed water, which consists of varying proportion of recovered
condensed water (return water) and fresh water, which has been purified in varying degrees
(make up water). The make-up water is usually natural water either in its raw state, or
treated by some process before use. Feed-water composition therefore depends on the
quality of the make-up water and the amount of condensate returned to the boiler. The
steam, which escapes from the boiler, frequently contains liquid droplets and gases. The
water remaining in liquid form at the bottom of the boiler picks up all the foreign matter
from the water that was converted to steam. The impurities must be blown down by the
discharge of some of the water from the boiler to the drains. The permissible percentage of
blown down at a plant is strictly limited by running costs and initial outlay. The tendency is
to reduce this percentage to a very small figure.
Proper treatment of boiler feed water is an important part of operating and maintaining a boiler
system. As steam is produced, dissolved solids become concentrated and form deposits inside the
boiler. This leads to poor heat transfer and reduces the efficiency of the boiler. Dissolved gasses
such as oxygen and carbon dioxide will react with the metals in the boiler system and lead to
boiler corrosion. In order to protect the boiler from these contaminants, they should be controlled
or removed, trough external or internal treatment. For more information check the boiler water
treatment web page.

In the following table you can find a list of the common boiler feed water contaminants,
their effect and their possible treatment.

Find extra information about the characteristics of boiler feed water.

IMPURITY RESULTING IN GOT RID OF BY COMMENTS

Soluble Gasses
Water smells like rotten Found mainly in
Aeration, Filtration, and
Hydrogen Sulphide (H2S) eggs: Tastes bad, and is groundwater, and polluted
Chlorination.
corrosive to most metals. streams.
Filming, neutralizing amines
Corrosive, forms carbonic Deaeration, neutralization
Carbon Dioxide (CO2) used to prevent condensate
acid in condensate. with alkalis.
line corrosion.
Deaeration & chemical Pitting of boiler tubes, and
Corrosion and pitting of
Oxygen (O2) treatment with (Sodium turbine blades, failure of
boiler tubes.
Sulphite or Hydrazine) steam lines, and fittings etc.
Suspended Solids
Tolerance of approx. 5ppm
Sediment & Turbidity Sludge and scale carryover. Clarification and filtration. max. for most applications,
10ppm for potable water.
Organic Matter Carryover, foaming, deposits Clarification; filtration, and Found mostly in surface

can clog piping, and cause
corrosion.
Dissolved Colloidal Solids
Oil & Grease Foaming, deposits in boiler Coagulation & filtration
Scale deposits in boiler,
inhibits heat transfer, and
Hardness, Calcium (Ca), thermal efficiency. In severe
and Magnesium (Mg)
cases can lead to boiler tube
burn thru, and failure.
Foaming, carbonates form
carbonic acid in steam,
Sodium, alkalinity, NaOH, causes condensate return
NaHCO3, Na2CO3 line, and steam trap
corrosion, can cause
embrittlement.
Hard scale if calcium is
Sulphates (SO4)
present
Priming, i.e. uneven delivery
of steam from the boiler
(belching), carryover of
water in steam lowering
Chlorides, (Cl)
steam efficiency, can deposit
as salts on superheaters and
turbine blades. Foaming if
present in large amounts.
Deposits in boiler, in large
Iron (Fe) and
amounts can inhibit heat
Manganese (Mn)
transfer.
Silica (Si) Hard scale in boilers and
cooling systems: turbine
blade deposits.
chemical treatment
Softening, plus internal
treatment in boiler.
Deaeration of make-up
water and condensate
return. Ion exchange;
deionization, acid treatment
of make-up water.
Deionization
Deionization
Aeration, filtration, ion
exchange.
Deionization; lime soda
process, hot-lime-zeolite
treatment.
waters, caused by rotting
vegetation, and farm run
offs. Organics break down to
form organic acids. Results
in low of boiler feed-water
pH, which then attacks boiler
tubes. Includes diatoms,
molds, bacterial slimes,
iron/manganese bacteria.
Suspended particles collect
on the surface of the water
in the boiler and render
difficult the liberation of
steam bubbles rising to that
surface.. Foaming can also
be attributed to waters
containing carbonates in
solution in which a light
flocculent precipitate will be
formed on the surface of the
water. It is usually traced to
an excess of sodium
carbonate used in treatment
for some other difficulty
where animal or vegetable
oil finds its way into the
boiler.
Enters boiler with
condensate
Forms are bicarbonates,
sulphates, chlorides, and
nitrates, in that order. Some
calcium salts are reversibly
soluble. Magnesium reacts
with carbonates to form
compounds of low solubility.
Sodium salts are found in
most waters. They are very
soluble, and cannot be
removed by chemical
precipitation.
Tolerance limits are about
100-300ppm as CaCO3
Priming, or the passage of
steam from a boiler in
"belches", is caused by the
concentration sodium
carbonate, sodium sulphate,
or sodium chloride in
solution. Sodium sulphate is
found in many waters in the
USA, and in waters where
calcium or magnesium is
precipitated with soda ash.
Most common form is ferrous
bicarbonate.
Silica combines with many
elements to produce
silicates. Silicates form very
tenacious deposits in boiler
tubing. Very difficult to
 remove, often only by
flourodic acids. Most critical
consideration is volatile
carryover to turbine
components.

http://energyconcepts.tripod.com/energyconcepts/water_treatment.htm

Generating Electricity
The principles of electricity generation were discovered by Michael Faraday in 1831. He found
that moving a bar magnet through a wire coil generated electricity. Modern generators are
more complex, but the difference is mainly one of scale.

Power stations range in size from single wind driven devices to major industrial sites, employing
many hundreds of staff, but what they are all doing is converting one kind of energy into
another. Different stations use a variety of energy sources but they all generate electricity in the
same way.

Simplified to its essentials, a power station consists of just two major items. First, there is a
machine that generates electricity when its shaft is turned - the generator. Secondly, there is
some kind of engine to turn the shaft. The generated voltage can be up to 25,000 volts, which is
transformed to a higher voltage for transmission on the grid.

Generators need to turn fast and continuously, and the most efficient type of engine for this is the
turbine. In the United Kingdom, most power stations use steam-driven turbines.

In a power station generator, the equivalent of Faraday’s bar magnet is a powerful

electromagnet - a coil energised by direct current to produce a magnetic field. This is mounted
on the central rotating shaft, and is called the rotor. Around the rotor is a series of coils called
the stator, in which the electrical voltage is generated by the rotating magnetic field. Both rotor
and stator may weigh several hundred tonnes.

The rotor turns at 3000 revolutions per minute - 50 per second - to produce alternating current
with a frequency of 50 hertz (cycles per second). Modern generators typically produce 500
megawatts of power, the largest generating up to 700 megawatts - enough to light seven million
100 watt bulbs!
The Boiler

The diagram below shows how coal is used to drive a turbine. Firstly the coal is pulverised into a
fine powder. Mixed with preheated air, the coal powder burns fiercely to heat water in the boiler
tubes. The steam emerging at the top of the boiler is returned to the furnace to be superheated.
This increases its energy before it is piped to the high-pressure cylinder of the steam turbine.
Superheated steam may be hot enough to make the steam pipe glow a dull red – over 560°C.

The hot gases leaving the boiler on their way to the chimney are used to preheat both the air
needed for combustion and the condensed water returning to the boiler (in the economiser).

1. Coal is pulverised into dust

2. Hot air blows coal dust into the furnace
3. The dust burns like a gas and boils the water
4. Superheated steam drives the turbines
5. The generator produces electricity
6. Steam is cooled and converted into water by the condenser
7. The warm water is cooled by air blowing through the tower
8. Water is recirculated to maximise use

A modern boiler can burn over 260 tonnes an hour of pulverised coal. Transporting such
quantities is expensive; so many coal-fired power stations are built close to coalfields. Some
coastal stations have coal brought in by sea, but inland power stations generally have to be
supplied by train. These stations have their own loop line (‘merry-go-round’), where special
hopper wagons discharge their coal load on the move, into bunkers beneath the rails.
For the same reasons, most oil-fired power stations are near oil refineries, or are located on the
coast or large estuaries. A typical 500 megawatt boiler can burn up to 2,750 tonnes of oil per day
– over 115 tonnes per hour.

Power stations waste a lot of the energy in the fossil fuels they burn. The best convert only
about 38% of it into electricity. Most of the wasted energy is heat – in the flue gases, and in the
water used to condense the steam as it leaves the turbine cylinders. Combined heat and power
(CHP) units make use of this ‘waste’ heat to provide hot water for room heating. The electricity
generated can be used locally or supplied to the National Grid. Although many CHP schemes are
currently being set up in Britain, the economics are not always favourable, mainly because we
have plenty of cheap natural gas for home and industrial heating. It may be worthwhile for
certain users, such as small factories and schools, leisure centres, hospitals and office blocks.
CHP could become more important in the future, because it can help reduce the emission of
carbon dioxide – a ‘greenhouse gas’ – into the atmosphere.

Distribution

Electricity arrives in your area from the national supply network (the National grid) at 275,000 or
400,000 volts. It is reduced to 132,000 volts at a substation for distribution within each area of
the country, travelling to further substations known as grid supply points. From these it is
distributed on overhead lines or underground cables at 33,000 volts - the primary distribution
networks - to the intermediate substations.

At the intermediate substations, electricity at 33,000 volts is reduced to 11,000 volts for
secondary distribution. The secondary distribution networks then carry it at 11,000 volts to
individual towns, industrial areas and groups of villages.

Particularly heavy users such as manufacturing industries are supplied at 33,000 volts. Electrified
railways have their own substations which draw electricity direct from the grid supply point - the
latest overhead-line systems run at 25,000 volts.

At the final substations, transformers reduce the 11,000 volt supply to 230 volts for small scale
customers such as homes and shops. A typical substation serves 200 to 300 houses. Larger users
such as farms take electricity at 415 volts.
Pioneers of Electricity

Fantastic, the wind’s excellent. Look at that kite fly. I don’t like the look of those clouds though.
I think it might be going to rain. Just a few minutes more and I’ll have to pull the kite in and find
some shelter. It’s dangerous to fly a kite during a storm. Lightning might strike the kite and
the electricity would come down the string and through me as the quickest route to the ground,
just like it would if you flew a kite too close to a power line. One of the people who first
discovered electricity did so by flying a kite in a storm. He was very lucky not to be hurt. Julie
knows quite a bit about the people who discovered electricity.
Ask Julie

Benjamin Franklin 1706-1790

Benjamin Franklin loved learning. He read and studied as much as he could. He was very
interested in the phenomenon of electricity and in 1749; he gave up editing and devoted himself
to the study of science.

His spectacular, but very dangerous, experiment of flying a kite in a thunderstorm with a metal
key attached to the string proved that lightning had an electrical discharge. From these
experiments, he developed the first lightning conductor, which won him fame and recognition
from scientists around the world. Franklin introduced several electrical terms that are still in use
today including words such as battery, conductor, positive and negative charge, electric shock
and electrician.

James Watt 1736-1819

James Watt is an important figure in the history of electricity because he invented the modern
steam engine. The engineering principles that Watt perfected in his steam engine were very
important to the development of modern power stations which still use these principles in
modern steam turbines.

James Watt was such an important person in the history of electricity that his name was given to
the units measuring electric power.
Luigi Galvani 1737-1798

Galvani is famous for using electricity to make a dead frogs leg jump. Galvani came up with
this amazing idea for an experiment after watching frogs legs which had been hung around an
iron balcony at home. Galvani observed these legs moving (even though they weren’t attached to
a live frog) and realised that this happened even when there wasn’t an electric storm. He
concluded that an electrical charge was generated by the combination of the copper hooks
holding the frogs legs and the iron balcony railing (which only goes to show what a dull night
life there must have been in Bologna during the 18th century).

Gavani went on to recreate this effect by creating an arc of electricity from a Leyden jar (a
rotating static electricity generator) to a frog’s leg and making it jump.

These gruesome discoveries of Galvani’s led to the invention of the first battery by Volta.
Galvani also experimented on himself, connecting two pieces of metal to create a bimetallic arc.
By touching one end of the arc in his mouth, and the other end in the corner of his eye he saw a
bright spark. (Do not try this at home!)

Count Alessandro Volta 1745-1827

Count Alessandro Guiseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta is most famous for his work on electric
current. His friend Galvani sent him copies of his papers on frogs legs and Volta queried
Galvani’s conclusion that the electric current he generated came from his living tissue rather than
the two metals. In 1794 Volta tested this theory using metals alone. An electric current was
produced which obviously could not have come from living tissue. This discovery upset the
friendship and Galvani was still cross about Voltas experiments when he died.

In 1800 Volta constructed a device that would produce a large flow of electricity. Volta’s device
was the voltaic pile. The voltaic pile involved bowls of salt solution connected by strips (arc’s),
of metal dipping from one bowl to the next – one end of the arc was copper and the other tin or
zinc.

In further experiments, he managed to reduce the size of the battery by using small round discs
of copper and zinc sandwiched by discs of cardboard moistened with a salt solution. This was
the first electric battery.

Volta played such an important part in the harnessing of electricity that his name was used as the
unit of electro motive force, ‘the Volt’.

André-Marie Ampère 1775-1836

André-Marie Ampère (January 22, 1775 - June 10, 1836) unravelled many of the mathematical
principles of electromagnetism. The ampere unit measuring electric current was named in his
honour.

Born in France Ampère started out being fascinated by mathematics. It was only in later life that
he became interested in first chemistry and the mathematics associated with physics and the new
field of electricity. In 1820 H.C Orsted published his discovery that a magnetic needle is
attracted or repelled by an electric current. Ampere was inspired and went on to develop a
mathematical theory to explain this phenomena and accurately predicted many more.

Michael Faraday 1791-1867

Michael Faraday is one of the most famous people associated with the discovery and harnessing
of electromagnetic force.
In 1831 Faraday demonstrated electro magnetic force to the Royal Institution in London. He
showed that an electro-motive force is set up in a wire when it is moved at right angles to a
magnetic field. If the wire is part of a closed circuit, an electric current is ‘induced’ inside it.

Faraday also worked out some of the ‘laws’ governing the production of electric current and
magnetic fields. He also invented a ‘magneto-electric machine’, a spinning disk between the
poles of the magnet, which was in fact, a primitive dynamo.

Faraday was the first to establish a method for generating a constant current of electricity and
paved the way for future power stations.

Faradays discovery of induced currents made possible the invention of the telephone, the
development of the telegraph, of electric lighting and the production of electricity for a thousand
and one uses of modern life.

Thomas Edison 1847-1931

Thomas Alva Edison was a prolific and successful inventor.

In 1889 he produced the ‘kinetograph’ which was the first motion picture camera, preceded by
the ‘kinetoscope’ the forerunner of the cinema. In 1912 he invented the kinetophone, which
linked the invention of the film camera with that of the phonograph and made a talking picture
possible.

By 1910 Edison had applied for over 1,300 patents mainly to do with electrical or mechanical
development. He persevered with his researches and patiently used his genius to become one of
the most successful inventors the world has known.

Sir Charles Parsons 1854-1931

Charles Parson is famous for designing the first turbine engines. These engines were the
prototypes for the current turbine engines used to generate electricity.

After college Charles Parsons took an apprenticeship in engineering at Elswick Works of W.G.
Armstrong in Newcastle upon Tyne. In 1884 Charles was made a junior partner and head of the
electrical section of Clarke, Chapman & Company, manufacturers of equipment for ships. He
took out a patent for his new turbine engine in 1884 and immediately utilised the engine to drive
an electrical generator, which he also designed.

The Royal Navy used Parson’s turbine design on HMS Viper and HMS Cobra. And before long
the Admiralty designers recommended that all new Royal Navy vessels should have turbine
power. In 1906 HMS Dreadnought was launched at Portsmouth, the first Royal Naval turbine
powered battleship.

Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti 1864-1930

Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti, credited with building the first large scale electricity generation
and supply network, was born in Liverpool of Italian descent.

In 1886 Ferranti was appointed Engineer in Chief of the Grosvenor Gallery station. One of the
problems he had inherited was that the transformers on consumers premises were connected to
the mains ‘in series’ – a lighting system that had worked well on railways. He replaced them
with others which he had designed to work ‘in parallel’ a system so successful that it is now used
universally.

Ferranti improved the generation and supply of electricity so much that soon the station was
supplying premises in 100 miles of streets, from Regents Park to the Thames and from
Knightsbridge to the Law Courts at the boundary of the City of London. At a time when most
stations were giving direct current supplies within a relatively small area.

What followed is a tribute not just to the engineering genius of Ferranti, but to the financial
courage and enterprise of those who were prepared to back his vision. On 26 August 1887 the
London Electric Supply Corporation – LESCo – was formed with an authorised capitol of £1
million. With the money Ferranti built the first great power station, the prototype of the
power stations that supply us with electricity today.
INDUSTRIAL BOILER :

Series of SHL boiler is bulk industrial boiler, with dual boiler cylinders
and transverse arranged, natural cycling coal combustion water pipe boiler.
The transverse upper and lower boiler cylinders and water cooling pipe walls
together form silo type furnace, and together with convection pipe bundle and
collection chest to form the boiler body frame. At the rear part, there is
coal saver, air pre-heater; and if necessary, it is available to set up
super-heater inner furnace. The combustion equipment is scale grating, step
free timing control. Exit shop in bulk type for site assembly and
construction. The smog flow is a type of multi-backhaul.

DHL series of boilers are single boiler cylinder transverse horizontal water
pipe type bulk delivered boilers. The combustion equipment of the boiler is
scale type coal leak-free grating; the boiler is arranged in "Π" way, the
convection pipe bundles are arranged in the level flue; the steel pipes of
coal saver and air pre-heater are arranged at the tai part of the boiler. The
water cool furnace wall is of natural circulation, and the water in coal
saver and convection bundle pipes is of compelled flow. The boiler is bulk
delivered and generally assembled on site.