Every mechanical system requires maintenance. Just like your car would break down without regular oil changes and tune-ups, the components in a steam system cannot be expected to work perfectly forever. Moving parts wear, soft good deteriorate, and failures happen. A steam trap survey is an excellent way to get ahead of small maintenance problems before they cause bigger issues or monetary losses.
THE PROBLEM WITH REACTIVE MAINTENANCE
The reactive approach to maintenance is fairly straightforward: You wait until you know there’s a problem, and then try to fix it. In a world where everyone is expected to do more with less, and manpower is already stretched thin, there’s often very little time for preventative maintenance, and even less time for surveying and testing equipment to ensure its operating correctly.
The problem with reactive maintenance, is that small issues can create bigger problems over time. A steam leak may go unnoticed for years, but can cost your facility a lot of money.
For example, a 100 psig steam line may use small inverted bucket steam traps as drip traps to remove the condensate that’s formed in the line. If just one small trap has failed and is blowing through, it could be losing around 32 lbs./hr. of steam. That may not seem like a big problem to the system operationally, but that small leak equates to over $2,500/year in steam losses (assuming $10 per thousand pounds of steam). In a system with 100 similar traps, even a 10% failure rate would create over $25,000/year in steam losses.
“Blow Through” isn’t the only failure mode of a steam trap. For example, they can also flood, rapid cycle, or leak steam to the atmosphere. Each of these failure modes can bring unique problems to your system… safety can be compromised, water hammer can occur, coils can freeze, and efficiency can plummet.
So, what do you do?
AN OUNCE OF PREVENTION IS WORTH A POUND OF CURE
The remedy to many of these headaches is to periodically perform a “Steam Trap Survey.” In its simplest form, the results of a steam trap survey should provide you with a list of all the steam traps in a system, indicating which ones have failed, and which ones are working properly. This gives you a list of problems in your system that can now be addressed. The problem with this simplified approach is that it operates under the assumption that all components were selected correctly and are suitable for the service conditions under which they currently operate. Sometimes, the best trap for an application is not the one that’s installed. Sometimes, a system change has been made, and the traps are seeing different pressures than the ones for which they were originally selected. Sometimes a trap appears to have failed, but the real issue lies elsewhere in the system. An overly simplified steam trap survey can result in wasted time and expenses replacing traps, without fixing other underlying issues.
NOT ALL SURVEYS ARE CREATED EQUAL
When selecting a steam trap survey professional, it pays to be discerning. A better-quality steam trap survey should not be a list of problems to be solved. It should be a list of solutions to be implemented. At Campbell-Sevey, we pride ourselves on our steam knowledge, and our ability to look at the “big picture.” We use a variety of technologies to diagnose issues with your steam traps and beyond, including ultrasonic listening devices, infrared temperature sensors, and more. Our expectation is not that we give you the results and then walk away. We’d rather partner with you. We’ll walk you through our recommendations and replacements and help you prioritize the order of implementation, focusing on the traps that are creating the highest-dollar losses first. From there, we can make a recommendation on how frequently you should be testing traps and surveying your system going forward, based on steam pressures, losses, and failure rates.
The report generated at the end of a steam trap survey could be as simple as a spreadsheet or a list of traps in a binder. These reports are only valuable if they are used, so we make ours as user-friendly as possible:
FORMAT – A three-ring binder can sit on a shelf for years without being opened. We can help you build a “living document” of your steam traps, to help track failures in real time, along with maintenance history and lifetime of the traps.
INFORMATION – Along with individualized trap tag numbers, it’s important for a report to include location information, so that traps are easily located for future maintenance.
APPLICATION INFORMATION – The equipment or steam lines served by the traps are important to note in the report as well. This can help for future troubleshooting and will let a technician know if the trap is a drip trap, if it’s seeing constant or modulating steam pressure, and a number of other important factors.
ANCILLARY EQUIPMENT – A steam trap is only one component of a system. A good survey report should also include a list of ancillary equipment around the trap (shutoff valves, check valves, strainers, etc.).
PIPING INFORMATION – Is the trap installed horizontally or vertically? Is there lift after the trap? If so, how much? If the report gives you all this information, it can solve a lot of guesswork in the future.
EXPERT LOCATION INFORMATION – Your local steam trap experts may be able to provide you with information on how to apply for rebates from your energy provider as a result of performing the survey. Campbell-Sevey can help you navigate these hurdles.
MONETIZED LOSSES – Steam losses can be monetized. We can help you estimate your losses due to failed traps and put a dollar amount to those losses. This can help calculate the ROI of maintenance projects and justify improvements.
Don’t wait for small problems to become big problems. Let us help you proactively maintain your steam system, saving you time, money, and headaches in the future! Contact us today to schedule your Steam Trap Survey.