GEM™ Steam Trap Upgrade Prevents System Downtime
As a leading producer of animal feeds across pig, poultry, cattle, sheep and game, themanufacturer’s flagship site in the UK has a high energy requirement. Steam is used throughout the site to cook, pellet and extrude the feed. This makes effective stream trapping key to the efficient running of the business.
The manufacturer’s aim is to provide a competitive offering to customers by being the most efficient producer of feeds from manufacture to distribution. As part of this, the company acknowledged its reliance on mechanical steam traps was costing them time and money.
Due to their moving parts, mechanical traps experience an average annual failure rate of between 5-10%. The aggressive environment puts mechanisms under strain making them subject to wear and breakage. As traps fail open, live steam is lost wasting valuable energy. Recognising, repairing and replacing these damaged steam traps also has an impact, and results in production downtime as lines need to be taken offline while maintenance is carried out.
In response, the company enlisted the help of Thermal Energy International. Following a detailed survey, the site fully converted to high-efficiency, low maintenance GEM™ steam traps.
The GEM™ Trap uses an orifice and multi-staged throat design to manage variable condensate flow rates. Each trap is calibrated based on the individual application. With no parts to break or wear, GEM™ Traps cannot fail and the specialist sizing process prevents live steam loss, eliminating one of the major problems associated with mechanical traps.
GEM™ Traps are engineered to be easily serviceable and are supplied with with a 10-year performance guarantee. This minimises the time and resources required to monitor and maintain a system, reducing the production line’s maintenance bill.
Savings from Start Up
Due to production schedules, the site experienced periods of shutdown on certain lines so it was vital that any steam trapping technology was able to remove water at start up following an extended shutdown as quickly as possible.
The GEM™ Trap regulates its capacity by creating a variable back pressure in the multi-staged throat that matches the condensate drainage needs of the application. At start up, the steam system becomes pressurised. Air and subcooled condensate jet through the GEM™ Trap’s orifice unobstructed, freely discharging at two to three times maximum capacity.
As the system’s temperature increases, the hot condensate passes through the orifice, moving from an area of high pressure to a lower pressure one.
his causes a proportion of the condensate to re-evaporate or ‘flash’ back to steam.
The flash steam created is up to 1,700 times greater in volume than the condensate. The GEM™ Trap’s multi-stage throat is designed to restrict the expansion of the flash steam and create a local variable back pressure which increases and decreases with flow rate.
This allows the trap to maintain a local and continuous ‘plug’ of condensate at the orifice. Live steam is prevented from escaping while the denser condensate is preferentially discharged through the trap – all without the need for moving parts
The Manufacturer’s Senior Engineer said;
We’ve had our GEM™ Traps in place for more than five years, with no issues. I inherited them from my predecessor and am impressed that this small piece of kit can make such a big difference. The traps are easy to maintain with a quick strainer clean being all that is required.
