As business people, we approach our work each day with several primary goals in mind. From a profit and loss stand, it seems simple; we try to maximize our revenues and minimize our expenses. For owners and operators of heating and process plants, this includes careful consideration and management of operating expenses. One of the most significant expenses facing any facility that operates steam or hot water boilers is fuel. In most cases, that fuel is natural gas.

It would follow that a good business approach to resource management in boiler plants has everything to do with dealing with rising natural gas costs as efficiently as possible. From a practical standpoint, this means understanding, prioritizing, and implementing fuel savings opportunities in boiler plants, which fire natural gas. There are many ways to improve boiler efficiency including, replacement of less efficient boilers with more efficient boilers, replacement or upgrades to burners which will reduce excess air in the combustion process, and various heat recovery schemes. Of these, one of the most profound methods of improving boiler efficiency is through the addition of flue gas heat recovery devices.

Commonly referred to as stack economizers, feedwater heaters and flue gas condensers, these devices can take both the sensible heat (and in some cases) the latent heat of hot gases and use this energy to preheat water going directly to the boiler, or heating water which is otherwise being heated by the boiler anyway.  Use of this otherwise wasted energy will in every example reduce the amount of natural gas (or other fuels) being burned in the boiler.

It seems clear that it’s just good business to identify those opportunities where the fuel savings is large enough to justify relatively short paybacks as a result of purchasing and installing equipment of this kind. Cannon Boiler Works is a highly experienced and highly respected manufacturer of many types of flue gas heat recovery equipment. Their most widely applied product is a feedwater heater, which is ideally matched up with packaged boilers firing natural gas in capacities ranging from 50 H.P. to 1000 H.P.

Cannon Boiler Works uses a wide variety of metallurgy (carbon steel, stainless steel, and duplex stainless steel) in their designs to address both condensing and non-condensing applications. CANNEPP is extremely proud to be the exclusive agent for Cannon Boiler Works in British Columbia and Yukon Territory. We have supplied and or installed more than fifty units on both new and existing boilers over the past few years with tremendous results across the board.

In this age of rapidly rising fuel prices (especially natural gas) the time has come for many boiler plant owners and operators to research this opportunity carefully with respect to their specific facility. In many cases it will be absolutely clear that the installation of one or more feedwater heaters must be built into either current or (near) future budgets.

As a quick example, a steam plant with a 200 H.P. boiler operating at 100 psig and an average firing rate of 100% (of the boiler capacity) with 50% or less condensate return for 5000 hours per year will save more than $15,000.00 per year (based on natural gas prices at $7.50 per gigajoule). Contrast this against an installed cost of approximately $30,000.00, and you will realize a simple payback on this investment in boiler plant efficiency of 2 years. After that, these savings go, you know where, straight to the bottom line! Add to this the simple fact that fuel prices will rise in the long term, and so will the savings associated with this quality upgrade to the boiler.

Getting back to our opening thoughts, it is just good engineering to discover that your plant has the potential for such dramatic improvement in efficiency through this one relatively simple addition. It’s just good business to find the hard earned dollars now, which will save the huge dollars down the road.

We challenge you to test us with your application, and we promise to provide well conceived, detailed and professional solutions in response.

After all, it’s just good business.

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