Steam Heat Exchanger Stall - Eliminate It For Best Performance

Industrial Steam Heat Exchanger
Courtesy JFD Tube & Coil Products

Efficient and reliable operation is always an objective of a steam system owner or operator. If your system employs heat exchangers, an understanding of heat exchanger stall will put you on a path to efficient operation, lower maintenance, and possibly longer useful life for major parts of your system.

Heat exchanger stall occurs when low load conditions reduce the steam pressure in the heat exchanger, decreasing the pressure differential across the steam trap to a point below the back pressure in the condensate line. The resulting condition causes condensate to back up into the heat exchanger, reducing its efficiency. There are other negative effects that are illustrated in the animated video below, produced by world recognized steam system experts Spirax Sarco and presented by Mountain States Engineering, a distributor in the Western US.

The video is useful and comprehensible to a wide range of  skill and knowledge levels. It takes only four minutes to view, and will leave you with a better understanding of how you can get consistent and efficient performance from your steam system.

For a steam system survey and evaluation, contact the engineers at Mountain States Engineering. They have the technical knowledge, products, and other resources to deliver solid and positive solutions for keeping your steam systems at peak operation.