Operating Costs of Oil-Fired Steam Boilers

Operating Costs of Oil-Fired Steam Boilers

The Operating Costs of Oil-Fired Steam Boilers are crucial equipment for thermal energy conversion in chemical enterprises.  They heat water into steam or hot water by burning diesel, heavy oil, and other fuels to meet the heat demand in chemical production.  This process includes fuel combustion, heat transfer, water circulation, and the output of steam or hot water.

In chemical production, oil-fired steam boilers play a vital role by providing steam or hot water for reactors, dryers, and textile machinery, maintaining the necessary temperature conditions.  Efficient boiler operation can enhance production efficiency, minimize interruptions, and ensure product quality.  Additionally, their flexibility can meet various chemical production needs, ensuring continuous and stable operation.

In chemical plants, the high operating costs of oil-fired steam boilers are a major concern, compressing profits and hindering sustainable development.  These costs stem from significant fuel consumption, price volatility, expensive maintenance, low energy efficiency, and increased environmental investments.  These challenges necessitate a balance between efficient production and cost control.  Thorough analysis and cost reduction strategies are essential to improve operational efficiency and enhance competitiveness.  ProExtractionUSA Boiler will next provide a detailed analysis of the causes and propose improvement measures.

Conclusion

In the highly competitive chemical industry, reducing operating costs is crucial for continuous profitability and enhanced competitiveness.  By optimizing production processes, improving equipment efficiency, and reducing energy and raw material waste, enterprises can effectively control costs while ensuring product quality.  This not only enhances profitability but also increases resilience to market fluctuations, ensuring long-term stable development.  Therefore, chemical plant managers should prioritize cost reduction and consider it a core task of daily management.

Since each chemical plant’s situation and needs are different, cost reduction methods should be tailored accordingly.  Managers should actively seek external expert assistance to formulate cost reduction plans suitable for their specific circumstances.  The expert team at ProExtractionUSA Boiler can comprehensively analyze and evaluate production processes, equipment conditions, personnel configurations, and other factors to provide targeted and practical suggestions.

If you are looking for effective ways to reduce operating costs and improve boiler efficiency, ProExtractionUSA Boiler can provide you with solutions to help you move towards a more efficient and greener future for your business.

Boiler Maintenance

What Is Industrial Boiler Repair?

Industrial boiler repair involves the thorough inspection, maintenance, and repair of damaged equipment associated with boilers in industrial settings.  The goal is to restore the boiler’s performance, ensuring safe, efficient, and stable operation.  It encompasses not only fixing immediate problems but also maintaining the long-term health and efficiency of the entire boiler system.

To ensure continuous operation and safety, regular inspections, maintenance, and prompt attention to issues are essential.  Our Boiler provides professional repair services with a highly experienced team that can quickly identify and address boiler stability issues during operation.  They utilize high-quality auxiliary equipment parts from reputable brands to minimize losses caused by unexpected boiler shutdowns, ultimately prolonging the lifespan of your industrial boiler.

You can mitigate risks, optimize boiler performance, and ensure the smooth and uninterrupted operation of your industrial processes with our Boiler’s expertise and repair services.

What Are Types of Industrial Boiler Repair?

There are many types of industrial boiler repairs, and the repair contents are also different. Below we will combine several common types of boiler repairs, Our Boiler describes as follows:

Preventive Boiler Repair

Preventive maintenance is the regular inspection and maintenance of the boiler before it fails.  This maintenance is designed to detect potential problems in advance and prevent them from developing into serious failures.

Preventive maintenance usually includes cleaning dust and dirt inside and outside the boiler, checking and replacing worn parts, calibrating safe installation positions, checking and tightening loose connections, etc.  Through preventive maintenance, the service life of the boiler can be extended, the operating efficiency can be improved, and the possibility of failure can be reduced.

Fault Boiler Repair for boiler maintenance

Fault repair is a repair activity performed after a boiler fails.  When a boiler fails, maintenance personnel need to quickly locate the problem and take appropriate measures to repair it.  This may include replacing damaged parts, repairing leaking pipes, adjusting control systems, etc.  The goal of fault repair is to restore the normal operation of the boiler as soon as possible, reduce downtime, and reduce plant production losses.

Coal Fired Boiler Repair

For coal fired boilers, our Boiler maintenance professional team will regularly clean the grate thoroughly to remove accumulated ash and ensure combustion efficiency and uniform temperature in the furnace.  Deep cleaning of the furnace and heating surface is also a service focus of coal-fired boiler repair.

Professional tools are used to remove smoke accumulation to prevent thermal efficiency reduction and equipment overheating damage.  In addition, we will also conduct a comprehensive inspection and cleaning of the exhaust system to ensure smooth exhaust of smoke and avoid negative pressure problems and potential flashback risks.

Gas (Oil) Fired Boiler Repair

In gas (Oil) fired Boiler maintenance repair, Our Boiler maintenance focuses on fine tuning of the burner, including ignition electrode inspection, flame detector maintenance and optimization of the fuel supply system to ensure high combustion efficiency and safe operation.  Our will also strictly inspect safety facilities such as gas leak alarm systems and flameout protection devices to ensure safe and stable operation of the boiler system and eliminate safety hazards.

Biomass Fired Boiler Repair

For biomass fired boilers, Our Boiler provides comprehensive maintenance services for the fuel supply system.  Additionally, it includes cleaning and inspection of the storage area and feeding system to prevent blockage and fire risks.  According to the characteristics of biomass fuel, we will also optimize the combustion chamber structure.  Furthermore, we optimize the air volume control to improve combustion efficiency and reduce emissions.  At the same time, ash treatment is also within its service scope to ensure regular cleaning of the ash collection system to avoid affecting equipment performance.

Electric Boiler Repair

In terms of electric boiler maintenance, Our Boiler’s professional electrical engineers will carefully check.  They will check the insulation performance of heating elements.  In addition, controllers and lines to ensure the safety of the electrical system and avoid short circuits and electric shocks.  The maintenance of the cooling system should not be ignored.  We will check the water circulation system to ensure that it is unobstructed and prevent overheating damage.  In addition, with the development of technology, we also provide control software upgrade services to optimize operating efficiency.  This will help and introduce the latest features to enhance user experience.

In summary, Our Boiler not only follows the specific needs of various types of boilers in its maintenance services.  We also incorporate its commitment to technological innovation and service quality.

Temperature Control of CBD and THC Process

 

Temperature Control for CBD/THC Extraction and Distillation

 

The legalization of the hemp cannabis derivative CBD and of marijuana and its THC derivative for medical and recreational purposes in many US states and all of Canada has led to significant economic growth in the CBD/THC extraction and distillation equipment sector. Many of the manufacturers of these two categories of equipment have been in business for a number of years, and the processes used for extraction and distillation have been refined over decades since they are used to extract and purify many different organic substances, chemical, petrochemical and alcoholic beverages. However, hemp and marijuana have their own unique characteristics, and the processes to extract and purify CBD and THC from their respective plant sources are still being fine-tuned by processors and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

There are quite a few different approaches to extraction and distillation of CBD/THC products, and each has certain benefits as well as some less desirable side effects; but they all have in common these parameters that need to be controlled: temperature, pressure or vacuum, source material throughput volume, and for extraction, solvent feed rate.

 

Extraction Process – Temperature control considerations

 

Current extraction processes include CO2, butane or propane, and ethanol.  In each of these methods, the extraction agent is cooled down to temperatures that can reach -80°C (-176°F) and then compressed until it is liquefied.  The temperature reduction is achieved using a chiller, which can be a standard piece of equipment or a custom unit designed to meet unique temperature profile requirements.

In commercial systems, extraction is typically performed in a jacketed vessel.  Water, oil or other liquids are circulated within the jacket by a temperature control unit (TCU) which maintains consistent vessel wall and extraction chamber temperatures.

Temperature control is necessary throughout all the steps in the process, but precise extraction chamber temperature control is absolutely essential to managing final product quality and characteristics.  This high level of control must also be replicable from one batch to another and in fact on a continuing basis over a large number of batches.  Controlling temperature to within .275°C (.5 °F) is a standard that permits a consistent finished product.  It is also important to note that repeatability, in addition to accuracy is extremely important for producers as it allows them to replicate the process over time, and thus insure consistent product quality.

For example, increasing the extraction temperature from the initial agent temperature can:
  • decrease the concentration of terpenoids in the extract
  • risk denaturing the final CBD/THC product
  • increase wax/resin extraction and overall volume, but yield a lower quality product
Similarly, decreasing extraction temperature can lead to:
  • increase the concentration of oil in the extract
  • reduce the wax proportion of the extract

For these reasons, having equipment that is capable of consistent and accurate temperature control is very important to producers; and as there is demand for many variations of this extraction process’ final product, chilling equipment and temperature control units with high precision, closed loop controls are critical.

Once the extraction process is complete a processor is left with “crude extract” that is 55- 75% cannabinoid and that may in some instances, be sold without any further processing. For the majority of processors however, further separation of the remaining elements is necessary to obtain fully purified, high value CBD/THC oil.

The next step in the purification process is to remove waxes by cooling the extract down to approximately -20°C (-4°F) in a chiller-driven jacketed vessel. This “winterization” process precipitates some of the undesired elements out of the solution which after filtering, leaves oil made up of cannabinoids, chlorophyll and terpenes. Decarboxylation is an important step that may be performed either before or after the winterization process. It is used to activate CBD/THC components and is accomplished by carefully heating an extracted solution to release the carboxyl ring group (COOH).

 

Distillation Process – Temperature control consideration

 

A distillation process is then conducted to complete the separation of the remaining elements and produce the purest possible CBD or THC oil. It is worth noting that even though a source material has been winterized, as much as 40% of the remaining feedstock may consist of undesirable materials.  Also, in the case of ethanol extraction, ethanol must then be evaporated to separate it from CBD/THC components.

As in the extraction process, the distillation process that is used to fully purify CBD/THC oils requires closely controlled temperature, pressure and source material feed rates to ensure that the necessary interactions produce a high-quality finished product with characteristics that generate the highest possible value.

The most common pieces of equipment are wiped film, molecular short-path stills.  In this approach, the feedstock of oil is fed into a jacketed vessel that is often heated with an oil circulating TCU to achieve temperatures up to 343°C (650°F), though the typical distillation temperature range is 130 -180°C (266-356°F). In these systems, the feed stock is distributed on the evaporation chamber wall with a special wiper.

The resulting thin film allows the more volatile terpenes to evaporate through the top of the chamber into their own external collection vessel, while the CBD/THC is collected along a TCU controlled central condenser unit which is cooler (typically 60-70°C / 140-158°F) than the evaporation chamber and serves to attract the cannabinoid vapor.  The final step in the process is solvent removal, which is accomplished in a separate, external cold trap, which is also temperature controlled with a chiller.

Certain OEMs offer wiped film molecular short-path distilling equipment that integrates the removal of heavier materials directly into their distilling process.  In this instance, chlorophyll, waxes and other heavier residue (up to 40% of the feed stock) descend the outer wall of the distillation vessel and are collected in their designated container.

In certain cases, a final separation step is taken to separate THC from CBD.  Crystallization is a common method.  A reactor vessel is filled with feedstock and a solvent which is chilled slowly from 60°C to -20°C.  A slurry results and that is transferred to a filter dryer to produce pure, dried crystals.  The filter is a jacketed vessel whose temperature is controlled with a circulating hot oil unit. The process results in a 98% or higher purity of the CBD or THC product.

Chillers
  • Capabilities from 1-60 tons (higher capacities offered as custom designs)
  • Variable speed design that can cut energy usage up to 50%
  • Standard operating range from -18°C to 27°C (0°F to 80°F)
  • Highly accurate closed loop temperature control to .275°C (.5°F)
  • Data logging with remote control and analysis tools
  • Industry 0 ready
  • Long life heat exchange materials and low maintenance design
Temperature Control Units (TCUs)
  • Water Circulating Temperature Control Units (TCU) will perform in processes up to 300°F (149°C)
    • ¾ to 7 ½ HP Pump, 25 to 150 GPM
    • 9 to 144 KW Low Watt Density Heater
    • 149°C (300°F) Fluid Operating Temperature
  • Oil units up to 343°C/650°F
    • 6, 12, 18, 24 or 36 KW Heaters, or special designs up to 360 KW
    • Maximum Operation Temperature up to 343°C (650°F)
    • 10 to 150 GPM Pumping Capacity
    • Heating Only or Heating with Cooling Capabilities
  • Dual circuit combination TCU/Chiller units
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