Live steam injection

[MMcLean]

Hi Engineers

We are wanting to inject approx. 3 tph of 3.5barg (before control valve) steam into an approx. 470 m3/h solution @ 65 to 70 oC. Spirax Sarco is the only supplier of steam injectors that comes to mind, but I don’t know if they supply them that big. I guess multiple parallel units is an option. Does anyone know of an alternative supplier of large steam injectors?

Cheers

Mark

 

[unclesyd]

Here is a an additional one. If you have a circulation loop you might want to look at an inline heater. Check these peoples line of inline heaters.

http://www.komax.com/det-shscepter.html

 

[katmar]

Hi Mark,

I recently faced the same problem and we designed our own which are working very well (and quietly). The Spirax units are great, but we would also have required too many of them. We simply made a "pipe within a pipe" unit, with the steam in the inner pipe and the liquid to be heated flowing past in the annular space. The piping was arranged so that the holes were always flooded and steam could not bypass the liquid.

We are heating the feed into the tank. If you need to inject the steam into the tank itself then you don't need the outer pipe.

We used many small holes in the inner pipe - I think they were 4 or 5 mm diameter. If you use large holes you get noisy cavitation as the steam bubbles collapse. The colder the solution you are injecting the steam into the smaller the holes need to be.

This system worked well for us - you need to satisfy yourself that this method is applicable to your problem - i.e. no guarantees from me!

regards
Katmar

 

[Torricelli]

Mark,

The steam ejectors and thermo-compressors manufacturers are listed under

http://www.vacuum-guide.com/firmenlisten/produkte/strahler.htm

hope it helps

Torricelli

http://www.vacuum-guide.com

 

[MMcLean]

Thanks for all your help guys. Isn’t this website a great resource!

It is inline steam injection we are after and we may consider designing our own. For anyone else out there, this site has quite a good basic design guide.

http://www.spiraxsarco.com/learn/

Cheers

Mark

 

[MMcLean]

Torricelli

I was chasing steam injectors (or spargers) not ejectors, but thanks anyway.

 

[Latexman]

We have used the homemade one similar to katmar. We make the sum of the area of all the holes about equal to the cross sectional area for flow of the steam feed pipe. It works beautiful!

Good luck,
Latexman

 

[Montemayor]

MMcLean:

I agree with what Katmar & Latexman have done. I did the same thing when I was running my own plants some years back. Lately, I've had to inherit other installations and work with pre-selected equipment. I've used and applied Pick Heaters for adiabatically mixing steam and liquids in direct-contact heating applications:

http://www.pickheaters.com/constant.htm

I found them to be equal in performance to my old design. However, they are warranted and more "sophisticated" and compact; at today's labor costs I don't know if I could still fabricate a cost effective model to compete with theirs. But, if you are interested you could contact them.


Art Montemayor
Spring, TX

 

[unclesyd]

Adding a caveat to the homemade design if you are using SS.

Unless you have a good design you could be subject to Thermal Fatigue in a big way. I have seen several instances where poorly designed, 304/316 SS steam spargers have caused a problem with Thermal Fatigue in piping runs downstream of the injection point. It is imperative that you have good mixing to alleviate wall temperature differences between any points greater than 50?F.

I would strongly recommend a store bought one from any of the manufacturers mentioned in the above post.

 

[EdStainless]

I have had good experience with Pick. We use some to contact heat some process fluids here.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Corrosion never sleeps, but it can be managed.

http://www.trenttube.com/Trent/tech_form.htm