Water Treatment for HVAC Boilers
A functioning boiler is essential for keeping industrial operations running. It produces steam for use in a wide variety of heating applications, including but not limited to:
- Heating domestic hot water.
- Maintaining accurate temperatures in industrial processes.
- Supplying comfort heating.
Whether your system uses steam or hot water to heat your facility, proper maintenance and prevention are critical for ensuring your commercial HVAC boiler runs well. See how investing in water treatment services can help you ensure your boiler works as it should.
How Commercial Boilers Work
A commercial boiler is a closed, pressurized system that uses either water or steam to heat your facility. During a heating cycle, a set of burners or electric coils generates heat, which gets transferred to the water through the heat exchanger. The water heats up until it boils and reaches its desired temperature. The hot water or steam then circulates throughout the building via a system of interconnected pipes, which heats the air.
Common Issues With Steam Boilers
Like cooling towers, water boilers are susceptible to two main types of problems — corrosion and scale. These issues can cause serious damage to your heating system, which can drive up your operating costs.
Scale
Boiler scale is a hard mineral deposit that builds up on your boiler's heat transfer surfaces and reduces the system's ability to heat efficiently. It forms when impurities like calcium, iron and silica precipitate from the water and concentrate on the metal surface.
Once it hardens, boiler scale acts as an insulator, which prevents the boiler from effectively transferring heat to the water. The buildup can also slough off the sides of the boiler, blocking water flow and potentially causing the system to overheat — or fail.
Corrosion
Corrosion occurs when metal oxidizes, which damages the surface and causes it to break down. Usually, corrosion is the result of oxygen-producing reactions between the metal walls of the boiler and the chemicals in the air or water.
Over time, corrosion can spread and eat away at the metal surface, damaging the boiler's sensitive inner mechanisms and causing operational issues. This erosion reduces the boiler's efficiency, making it more costly to run and shortening the boiler's life span.
Localized corrosion, or pitting, is the most harmful type of corrosion. Because it's so highly concentrated in a small area, pitting often erodes the metal faster and leads to total part failure.
The Importance of Boiler Water Treatment for Your Industry
Whatever industry you operate in, keeping your steam boiler in peak condition is essential for maintaining operational efficiency and keeping operational expenses low. Additionally, preventive maintenance helps keep the people in your facility safe.
- HVAC: Boilers used for heating must be well-maintained to prevent issues like corrosion, scale and microbiological growth. Keeping your HVAC boiler clean ensures your air is safe to breathe and your system remains operational.
- Food processing: Temperature control is critical in the food and beverage industry, and even one hour of downtime can cause thousands of dollars in losses. Proper boiler maintenance and preventive care enhance your boiler's ability to heat water efficiently, keeping productivity high.
- Health care: Proper patient care is the chief concern of all health care facilities, which is why maintaining your steam boiler is so vital. Our chemical water boiler treatments can also help eliminate Legionella from your system, protecting patients from serious illnesses like Legionnaires disease and Pontiac fever.
- Breweries: Even, efficient heating is critical for the brewing process — cleaning and maintaining your water boiler with the right chemicals and equipment can help extend your boiler's life span and keep your brewery at peak productivity.
Our technicians have extensive experience working with facilities in all of the above industries and more, so you can rely on us to design systems that make sense for your needs.
The Benefits of Water Treatment Systems From Chardon Labs
At Chardon Laboratories, we design treatment plans to help companies maximize their water heating and cooling systems. Our boiler water treatment services can help you:
- Prevent downtime by maintaining high boiler efficiency.
- Ensure your building is safe for staff and customers.
- Boost your facility's energy efficiency and keep costs low.
- Reduce the need for costly repairs or replacements.
We carry a range of products that enable us to provide high-quality service at affordable prices. Some of the chemicals we use in our boiler water treatment services include:
- Scale prevention.
- pH control.
- Boiler inhibitors.
- Return-line corrosion prevention chemicals.
We'll also help you find the right equipment for your specific application. Some of the tools we carry include:
- Boiler controllers.
- Blowdown solenoids.
- Corrosion coupon racks.
- Boiler probes.
- Chemical pumps.
- Contact headwater meters.
When we begin working on your treatment system, we'll assess your facility and consult with you to make sure we choose the right tools for the job.
Our Boiler Water Treatment Equipment and Chemicals
Our arsenal of treatment chemicals and equipment helps us provide the best service to our customers. Here are two examples of how we'll use those tools to clean your boiler.
Corrosion Prevention
To prevent the metal from oxidizing, we use sodium sulfite as an oxygen scavenger — a chemical that helps reduce or eliminate the oxygen levels in your feedwater. We also add various other water treatment products as needed to disperse particulates and precipitated crystals.
These chemicals prevent dissolved minerals from settling and forming corrosive deposits, which protects your boiler against pitting and thermal stress.
Eliminating Scale
Part of our water treatment service includes a chemical treatment. We apply chemical solutions that react with and consume scale-forming minerals, which prevents them from concentrating into deposits.
Depending on your geographical location, we may also use water softeners — these chemicals remove calcium, magnesium and iron ions from water to prevent scale from developing.
We also incorporate blowdown into our treatment strategy, which involves deliberately draining feedwater flow at regular intervals to limit the concentration of scale-causing minerals. We then replace the blown-down water with lower-concentration water to keep the system running as needed.
Choose Chardon Labs for Your Boiler Chemical Treatment Today
At Chardon Laboratories, we know how critical effective heating is for productivity, and we understand that every facility is different. When you work with us, we help you design a water treatment system tailored to your facility's specific needs — whether you're operating a brewery, a hospital or a cannery, you'll get the most out of your industrial boiler.
You can count on our ISO-certified technicians to provide top-quality service and help you keep your costs low. Contact us today for more information.