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Lesson 33 · Boiler cycles
A boiler is a tower that boils
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A boiler is a tower that boils

Everything from the first two lessons transfers, with one substitution: steam is the boiler's evaporation. Water boils off pure and leaves its dissolved solids in the drum, exactly as a tower's vapour leaves them in the basin.

COC=TDSbTDSfw\text{COC} = \dfrac{\text{TDS}_b}{\text{TDS}_{fw}}, where TDS\text{TDS} is total dissolved solids in ppm. The subscripts, stated once: b is the boiler water — the drum sample, the concentrated one — and fw is the feedwater, which is fresh makeup blended with whatever condensate came home. Feedwater, not makeup: returned condensate is nearly pure, so a plant with good returns starts from a cleaner feedwater and earns its cycles more easily.

%B=100 TDSfwTDSb\%B = \dfrac{100\,\text{TDS}_{fw}}{\text{TDS}_b} is the blowdown percentage of feedwater, and it is simply one over the cycles in a percent coat: 20 cycles is 5 % blowdown, 10 cycles is 10 %. Note the difference from the tower — a boiler's percentage is taken against FEEDWATER, which already includes the blowdown, so there is no minus-one correction in it.

B=SCOC−1B = \dfrac{S}{\text{COC} - 1} is where the correction returns. SS is the steam production rate and BB the continuous blowdown, both as mass flows in lb/hr — the currency of every North American boiler nameplate, alongside boiler horsepower at 34.5 lb/hr each. Same algebra as the tower, letter for letter, with SS where EE stood.

What limits the cycles is not scale, as at a tower, but carryover. Concentrate the drum too far and the water foams; foam is carried into the steam; wet steam erodes turbine blades and hammers traps. That is why the TDS limit is a number in a code table and not an opinion — roughly 3500 ppm for a firetube boiler, far less for a high-pressure watertube. And every pound blown down leaves at saturation temperature, so it is fuel going to drain as well as water. That is what a blowdown heat exchanger is for.

TDSfwTDSbCOC

COC=TDSbTDSfw\text{COC} = \frac{\text{TDS}_b}{\text{TDS}_{fw}}

  • COC\text{COC}= Cycles of concentration
  • TDSb\text{TDS}_b= Boiler water TDS (concentration)
  • TDSfw\text{TDS}_{fw}= Feedwater TDS (concentration)
Boiler Cycles of Concentration solver →
TDSfwTDSb%B

%B=TDSfwTDSb×100\%B = \frac{\text{TDS}_{fw}}{\text{TDS}_b} \times 100

  • %B\%B= Blowdown percent of feedwater
  • TDSfw\text{TDS}_{fw}= Feedwater TDS
  • TDSb\text{TDS}_b= Boiler water TDS limit

each variable a concentration

Boiler Blowdown Percent solver →
SCOCB

B=SCOC−1B = \frac{S}{\text{COC} - 1}

  • BB= Blowdown rate (mass flow rate)
  • SS= Steam production rate (mass flow rate)
  • COC\text{COC}= Cycles of concentration
Boiler Blowdown Rate from Steam Rate solver →