Background

There are two diesel fuel steam boilers in a food processing plant. Boiler feed water is treated by water softener and traditional chemicals.

The original objective is to replace the water softener by HydroFLOW so as to cut the operation and maintenance cost of the softener. After detail discussion with the customer, the potential saving in fuel consumption will be a great advantage than the cost cut in softener. As a result, HydroFLOW is installed for the purpose of fuel saving and water softener is remained in its position.

Before the installation of HydroFLOW, the boiler tubes were inspected and shown in picture 1. Due to the high temperature of the tubes, mineral scale deposit on the tubes could not be captured clearly but could be visualized by eyes.

Result

After one year of operation without pre-cleaning of the tubes, it was found that the scale deposit on tubes was much thinner than one year ago as shown in picture 2. The remaining deposit was found to be the anti-corrosion agent again.

The fuel saving is realized by the less frequent call for the order of diesel. The annual saving is finalized to be 10.0% and the investment is paid back in 3 months