How can steam be used

Another illustration is pellet meals, and steam is injected in mills that produce animal feed in the form of the pellet so as to provide more amount of water inside the conditioner sector. The moisture also helps to make the feed more soft as well as gelatinize the content of starch present in the ingredient producing firm pellets. Atomizing is a process whereby steam is mechanically used for separating a mixture of fluid. Fuel generators and steam boilers use the exact procedure to divide viscous oil to tiny droplets that offer efficient combustion.

To add to that, steam atomization is used in flares for reducing exhaust pollutants. This is done by mixing steam with flares inside the waste gas prior to combustion. Industries and other big commercial use minimal saturated pressure steam as a predominant source of heat for indoor heating during cold climate.

Steam modifiers are used alongside HVAC coils to condition indoor air, control infection, and preserve records and books. The airdrops its relative humidity when you heat col air through the steam coils. This needs to be adjusted to the normal level by adding an injection of arid saturated steam in airflow downstream.

A motive is a force that moves gas and liquid in pipes, and steam is used as a motive. Jet ejectors of steam help to push vacuum on equipment processes like towers for distillation that separate and purify vapor streams. Also, they are used to remove air continuously from the surface of condensers so as to obtain a good vacuum pressure from condensing turbines.

This is done by allowing high-pressure steam to pass in jet ejector through the nozzle inlet and diffused afterward. This makes a minimal pressure zone that goes in the air from the condenser. Steam boilers and generators that use fuel oil will use this method to break up the viscous oil into smaller droplets to allow for more efficient combustion.

Flares also commonly use steam atomization to reduce pollutants in the exhaust. Steam is used to clean a wide range of surfaces.

One such example from industry is the use of steam in soot blowers. Boilers that use oil or coal as the fuel source must be equipped with soot blowers for cyclic cleaning of the furnace walls and removing combusted deposits from convection surfaces to maintain boiler capacity, efficiency, and reliability.

Steam released out of the soot blower nozzle dislodges the dry or sintered ash and slag, which then fall into hoppers or are carried out with the combusted gasses. Steam is sometimes used to add moisture to a process while at the same time supplying heat. For example, steam is used for moisturization in the production of paper, so that paper moving over rolls at high speed does not suffer microscopic breaks or tears.

Another example is pellet mills. Often mills that produce animal feed in pellet form use direct-injected steam to both heat and provide additional water content to the feed material in the conditioner section of the mill. The moisturizing of the feed softens the feed and partially gelatinizes the starch content of the ingredients, resulting in firmer pellets. Many large commercial and industrial facilities, especially in colder climates, use low pressure saturated steam as the predominant heat source for indoor seasonal heating.

HVAC coils, often combined with steam humidifiers, are the equipment used for conditioning the air for indoor comfort, preservation of books and records, and infection control. When the cold air is heated by the steam coils, the relative humidity of the air drops, and it must then be adjusted to normal levels with addition of a controlled injection of dry saturated steam into the downstream air flow.

Steam is used to humidify air within an air duct before the air is distributed to other regions of a building. Products Browse Products by Category. Find a Specific Model. Technical Documents. Product Solutions. CAD 3D. Archived Documents. Steam can hold five or six times as much potential energy as an equivalent mass of water.

When water is heated in a boiler, it begins to absorb energy. Depending on the pressure in the boiler, the water will evaporate at a certain temperature to form steam. The steam contains a large quantity of stored energy which will eventually be transferred to the process or the space to be heated.

It can be generated at high pressures to give high steam temperatures. The higher the pressure, the higher the temperature. More heat energy is contained within high temperature steam so its potential to do work is greater. Modern shell boilers are compact and efficient in their design, using multiple passes and efficient burner technology to transfer a very high proportion of the energy contained in the fuel to the water, with minimum emissions.

The boiler fuel may be chosen from a variety of options, including combustible waste, which makes the steam boiler an environmentally sound option amongst the choices available for providing heat.

Centralised boiler plant can take advantage of low interruptible gas tariffs, because any suitable standby fuel can be stored for use when the gas supply is interrupted. Highly effective heat recovery systems can virtually eliminate blowdown costs, return valuable condensate to the boiler house and add to the overall efficiency of the steam and condensate loop.

Because of the direct relationship between the pressure and temperature of saturated steam, the amount of energy input to the process is easy to control, simply by controlling the saturated steam pressure. Modern steam controls are designed to respond very rapidly to process changes. The item shown in Figure 1. Its accuracy is enhanced by the use of a pneumatic valve positioner. The use of two-port valves, rather than the three-port valves often necessary in liquid systems, simplifies control and installation, and may reduce equipment costs.

Steam provides excellent heat transfer. When the steam reaches the plant, the condensation process efficiently transfers the heat to the product being heated. Steam can surround or be injected into the product being heated.

It can fill any space at a uniform temperature and will supply heat by condensing at a constant temperature; this eliminates temperature gradients which may be found along any heat transfer surface - a problem which is so often a feature of high temperature oils or hot water heating, and may result in quality problems, such as distortion of materials being dried.

Because the heat transfer properties of steam are so high, the required heat transfer area is relatively small. This enables the use of more compact plant, which is easier to install and takes up less space in the plant. A modern packaged unit for steam heated hot water, rated to kW and incorporating a steam plate heat exchanger and all the controls, requires only 0. In comparison, a packaged unit incorporating a shell and tube heat exchanger would typically cover an area of two to three times that size.

Increasingly, industrial energy users are looking to maximise energy efficiency and minimise production costs and overheads. The Kyoto Agreement for climate protection is a major external influence driving the energy efficiency trend, and has led to various measures around the globe, such as the Climate Change Levy in the UK.