Importance of Steam Traps and Safety Valves

People often neglect the importance of steam traps. They feel too confident with the system and don’t realize how costly it will get as soon as the steam system gets damaged. Even factories only focus on their boilers and forget about the rest of their steam system. If continuously left unmaintained, they will incur losses, including wasted energy and replacement of damaged equipment, which is equivalent to hundreds and thousands of dollars.

These potential losses can be prevented by an effective steam management system, such as steam trap surveys. A steam trap survey serves as a key in discovering problems that require corrective action. Once the maintenance manager is able to easily locate where the problem is, steam loss will be avoided. Therefore, it is important to understand the basics of a steam system.

Basically, steam traps are automatic valves which discharge condensed steam from a steam space to prevent the loss of live steam. These also eliminate air and non-condensable elements from the steam space. Furthermore, steam traps are built to sustain steam energy efficiency in heating a building or maintaining heat for process, for instance. Once steam becomes hot water, it is removed by the trap and either returned to the boiler or released to the atmosphere.

Different types of steam traps, such as float traps, thermostatic traps, inverted bucket traps, and thermodynamic traps are available in the market today. Each type of steam trap has its unique characteristics to suit your steam system’s needs. There are also safety relieve valves, like Spence valves, which are pressure relief devices intended to avoid unnecessary internal fluid pressure build-up.

In steam systems, safety valves, like Spence valves, are usually used to prevent boiler overpressure and product damage. Situations where excessive pressure is generated includes cooling system failure, compressed air or electrical power failure, plant fires exposure, heat exchanger tube failure, and ambient temperature changes, among many others.

The safety valves primary function is to protect life and property. Spence valves, for instance, release a volume of fluid when the maximum pressure is reached, reducing the excess pressure safely. Therefore, it is important for such a device to operate well under all possible conditions.

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