Boiler Water Chemistry In fact, some plants that have no return condensate now use amines to protect saturated steam lines. What can be done to prevent condensate corrosion where government regulations prevent the use of amine treatments in effective amounts when the steam is used for live-steam cooking of food products?
J. J. MAGUIRE: Practically all government operated heating plants are now permitted to protect return lines against corrosion with any one of the amine treatments. Usually, permission to apply such treatment must be obtained in advance from central (Washington) or a divisional headquarters. The permissible concentrations are adequate for preventing corrosion.
Joint Research Committee on Boiler Feed Water Studies EVERETT P. PARTRIDGE Hall Laboratories, Pittsburgh, Pa.
The committee, cooperatively sponsored by six technical societies, encourages investigation and research on the problems connected with the use of water in steam power plants.
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HE Joint Research Committee on Boiler Feed Water Studies is made up of a group of individuals particularly concerned with the problems resulting from the use of water in steam power plants. Because these problems can be grouped in three categories, there are three subcommittees whose special provinces are, respectively, corrosion, deposits, and steam contamination. To an unusual extent, the committee cuts across technical society lines. A a official sponsors it has six technical organiaations--American Boiler Manufacturers’ Association and affiliated industries, American Railway Engineering Association, American Society for Testing hfaterials, American Society of Mechariiral Engineers, American Water Works Association, and Edison Electric Institute. Each of these organizations names two representatives to the executive committee, which also comprises the current officers and the past chairman and secretary. A committee on technical papers is headed by the first vice chairman, currently R. C. Adams of the U. s. Saval Engineering Experiment Station. Plans for the procurement of research funds are supervised by the second vice chairman, P. B. Place of Combustion Engineering-Superheater, Inc. The executive committee has recently set up a finance committee to sell to industry the value of the research projects outlined by the technical subcommittees. The committee determines areas in its special field where basic facts are least adequate and elicits cooperative efforts to provide these missing facts. One past achievement of which the committee is particularly proud is the research project relating to the embrittlement of boiler steel conducted in cooperation with the Bureau of Mines.
The project started with the limited objective of measuring solubility equilibria so that it could be determined when a concentrating boiler water would deposit sodium sulfate in the capillary spaces of a riveted seam in a boiler. This project proved unusually fruitful, as a result of the energy and imagination of the investigators, W. C. Schroeder and A. A. Berk, and from it came not only a great deal of fundamental information, but also two developments of great practical value. These are the embrittlement detector, a mechanical device for determining whether or not the water in a specific operating boiler is capable of producing embrittlement, and the evidence that sodium nitrate is a particularly effective inhibitor of the intergranular attack which causes failure of the steel. Currently, the campaign is just starting to procure funds for a study of the interaction of water and steel at high temperatures and pressures, for an investigation of the formation of iron oxide on turbine valves, and for other projects not yet specifically recommended by the technical subcommittees. In addition to its function of sponsoring research, the Joint Research Committee on Boiler Feed Water Studies attempts to disseminate technical information. It has cooperated during the past year with the Water Conference of the Engineers’ Society of Western Pennsylvania, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the American Power Conference, and the AMERICAN CHEXICAL SOCIETY. Reprints of a recent symposium on steam contamination have been made available in composite form through the headquarters of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. An extensive bibliography on steam contamination is now being published and will be available at cost through the same source.
End of Symposium Reprints of this symposium may be purchased for 75 cents each (special price on bulk orders) from the Reprint Department, AMERICAN CHEMIC4L SOCIETY, 1155 Sixteenth St., N.W., Washington 6, D. C. May 1954
INDUSTRIAL AND ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY
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