How to test your boiler's energy efficiency?

With a piece of equipment as important as a boiler,energy efficiencyis key. The last thing you want is fuel being wasted when it could be used to heat water. For this reason, testing the energy efficiency of your industrial boiler should be part of routine maintenance.Typically, the best way to test the efficiency of a steam boiler is by installing a set of meters to measure each part of the process.

There will be a meter measuring steam, a meter tracking the speed of the water moving into the boiler, and a meter on the fuel that's heating the boiler. Taking these measurements can determine the efficiency of any boiler system.For instance, measuring how many pounds of steam are coming out of a boiler and comparing it to the amount of natural gas needed to produce that steam is a way to calculate the efficiency of the boiler.

If you make this calculation on a regular basis and the number begins to change or fluctuate, it means the efficiency of your boiler is changing, most likely in the wrong direction.Ideally, you'll want to use the least amount of natural gas possible to create the steam that you'll need to operate. Even if the steam meter goes down, it's not necessarily a problem as long as the fuel meter goes down at a similar rate. If those two meters change at a vastly different rate, it means that both fuel and money are being wasted because the boiler is not performing as efficiently as it should.Another element of a boiler's efficiency is its steam traps.

When heat leaves steam, it turns into condensation that gets collected by steam traps and sent back to the boiler. However, if the steam traps are not functioning as well as they should be, that condensation isn't utilized as it could be, making the boiler less efficient.