Boilers: Concerns

Whichever the origin of water and regardless the purifying processes, the chemical treatment becomes essential in order to prevent the equipment block up.

Although it's true that in the last years the technology of purifying water had a great development, the increasing pressures and the characteristics of industrial equipment arose the requirement of more strict specifications, supporting and emphasizing the need for chemical treatments in order to prevent frequent breakdowns, considerable costs with maintenance, and explosions with serious physical and material consequences.

Water is responsible by three serious boiler problems: deposits, scaling and corrosion.

DEPOSITS:

Shapeless and solid formations, created by the presence of solids and organic substance. After agglutination, precipitate forming deposits on tubes, mirrors and furnaces, reducing heat transfer.

SCALING:

Solid, resistant, shapeless or crystalline formations which can originate within deposits. The calcium, magnesium, silicon and iron compounds, when reaching certain concentrations, precipitate on the metallic parts, forming coats which grow quickly by polar attraction.

The scale have insulating characteristics similar to amianthus. Deposited on tubes and mirrors, reduce the heat transfer, causing the increasing of fuel consumption, alloy deterioration and destruction of tubes, mirrors and furnaces.

CORROSION:

Corrosion is responsible by the destruction of alloy, tubes, mirrors, furnaces and hull of boilers. It is processed, mainly, by the oxygen chemical action on iron.