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A 40 year boilermaker in Gary showed me the mud drum on a D-type boiler holds less water than I figured
Last month I was on a turnaround at a plant outside Gary, Indiana, and a guy who has been at this 40 years walked me through the mud drum on a D-type package boiler. The paper said it held 180 gallons, but when we drained it, the actual water that came out was closer to 95. He said scale and sludge take up the rest, and that is why bottom blowdowns matter more than people think. I checked the same thing on two more units during the shutdown and both ran 40 to 50 gallons light. We ended up pulling the handhole covers on all three and the buildup at the low points was thick enough to scrape with a putty knife. So how do you all figure your blowdown rate, by the book number or by what actually drains out?
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irisowens14d ago
That "180 gallons on paper vs 95 that actually drained" part hit home for me. We pulled a mud drum on a D-type last spring and got about half of what the spec sheet claimed, straight sludge at the low end. I go by what drains now, not the book, because the book doesn't know how hard the water's been.
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