Flash steam – What a waste!

Flash steam is pretty much inevitable in every steam plant – it comes from the hot condensate discharge from steam traps.

June 24, 2013

A commonly accepted view is that nothing much can be done about it – it’s the “necessary evil” of a steam system. But although it’s true that flash steam is generally unavoidable, it’s quite wrong to believe that nothing can be done about it. Flash steam is pretty much inevitable in every steam plant– it comes from the hot condensate discharge from steam traps.

The notion that it’s unrecoverable comes from the fact that flash steam is low-pressure steam with a relatively low temperature and constitutes “low-grade heat” compared to most, if not all, of the heating requirements on a site. And it many cases this does indeed appear

Refer to the flash steam recovery design below. The boiler feedwater is pressurized on the discharge side of the boiler feed-pump, downstream of the boiler feed check valve (non-return valve).

Content provided by Spirax Sarco, originally published in Steam News Magazine.