Boiler antiscalant replacement at a packaging plant
Boiler antiscalant replacement was the goal at Babylon Trims Ltd, which makes paper and card packaging at its facility in Savar, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Its three-tonne steam boiler relied on a softener using 400 kg of salt a month and on 16.5 kg of antiscalant a month, and still needed blowdown every hour and three days of cleaning. One HydroFLOW® unit was fitted on the boiler’s cold-water inlet after the high-pressure pump, and both the softener and the antiscalant were stopped. Blowdown went from every hour to every four hours, the tubes were clear of hard scale, and treatment costs fell by 15,200 BDT a month.
The Challenge
- Boiler antiscalant replacement was needed to cut ongoing chemical costs
- The softener used 400 kg of salt every month
- Antiscalant dosing ran at 16.5 kg a month
- The boiler needed blowdown every hour
- Descaling the boiler took three days
The Solution
- Unit installed: one HydroFLOW® unit
- Installation point: cold-water inlet to the boiler, after the high-pressure pump
- System: three-tonne steam boiler
- Chemicals stopped: softener salt and antiscalant
The boiler antiscalant replacement was done in one step: the HydroFLOW® unit went on the cold-water inlet after the high-pressure pump, and the softener and the antiscalant dosing were both stopped. The boiler was opened after 1.5 months, when the tubes were found cleaner than after a conventional clean, with soft deposits and detached old scale collecting in the T-header.
