Any industry using boilers to generate steam energy requires very pure water. Although municipal water sources may be drinkable, they still contain numerous deposits that build up to damage and corrode your equipment, causing excessive maintenance and repair costs for your high-temperature, high-pressure boiler systems. The following overview explains 3 key reasons your facility needs a boiler feed water treatment system to remove these substances:

1. Industrial Boilers Need Extremely Pure Water

Every water source contains dissolved and suspended substances that impact industrial boilers. This is true whether you operate in an area with soft or hard water. These excess minerals can ruin pipes and boiler machinery quickly because the high boiler pressures and temperatures cause minerals and impurities to separate from the water and attach themselves to the equipment. The result: scale buildup, corrosion and fouling that requires frequent cleaning, maintenance and even equipment replacement—all of which costs too much money and downtime. The following are just a few of the suspended and dissolved minerals that can damage your boiler systems. They include both solids and gasses sourced from municipal and raw water resources:

• Calcium
• Silica
• Magnesium
• Alkalinity
• Sodium
• Chloride
• Carbon Dioxide
• pH
• Oxygen
• Sulfates

Even the best municipal water utilities  provide water that has certain dissolved solids (minerals) present. In fact, many of those minerals are considered helpful for human health—not so for high-pressure, high-temperature boiler equipment, however. Industries need to use water without these minerals in their boiler feed water; therefore, an additional boiler feed water treatment system is required to remove them.

2. High-Pressure Boilers Require Pure Water

High-pressure boilers have a very low tolerance for suspended or dissolved impurities in water. So, it’s crucial to follow the manufacturer’s recommendations for the feed water used in them, because chemistry plays a role in how well the equipment functions. Every boiler system comes with recommendations that determine exactly how pure the boiler feed water should be, and what the optimal levels of Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) are for that equipment. It’s important to treat the incoming feed water and test it on a regular basis to ensure that this water does not overstep American Society of Engineers (ASME) recommendations for levels of contaminants in boiler feed water at high pressures.

In many cases, simply meeting the requirements only provides minimal efficiency. The purer the water, the more efficient your boiler can operate. This can result in an increase in boiler cycles, saving your facility capital costs.

3. Pure Feed Water Reduces Equipment and Repair Costs for Boilers

The bottom line is that impure boiler feed water causes accelerated boiler system degradation and potential malfunction. Boiler systems are not only critical to the facility’s business but they are costly to repair or replace. Excessive repairs, maintenance and replacement costs can add up, not to mention wasting valuable production time. Using properly-treated boiler feed water, however, can prevent these costs and keep your boilers running at higher efficiency with an extended life span all with fewer costs in repair and downtime.

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