In a steam deaerator, steam serves as the scrubbing agent to reduce the partial pressures of the gases being removed.  The phenomenon of gas removal from water through the use of scrubbing in a deaerator can be accomplished in several different ways. 

With the scrubbing action occurring, the deaerator must vent the non-condensable gases into atmosphere.  Therefore, the only acceptable steam venting from a steam system operation is the Deaerator venting of non-condensable gases with a very small percentage of steam.  To accomplish this goal of venting non-condensable gases; the deaerator will vent a small percentage of steam.

With the high cost of steam today, the deaerator vent must be investigated to insure excessive venting of steam is not occurring.  Our Steam Group Members have found steam losses that have exceeded $ 100,000.00 a year cause unnecessary venting from the deaerator.

Read the full best practice @ http://www.plantsupport.com/download/PSE_BP_2.pdf

We are a small hospital and we are thinking about removing all of our steam and replacing it with a hot water system.  Is there a way to determine what the payback for a project like this would be?  We currently have 3 boilers that operate at 120 psig.  We only use the 100 psi steam in a few applications such as sterilization.  Our domestic hot water system and heating system is a low steam pressure. 

Would there be any payback in changing the high pressure systems to low pressure and operating our boilers at 15 psi instead of 100 psi and having a dedicated steam boiler for the sterilizers?

Thank You

Gary Harvath

In a steam deaerator, steam serves as the scrubbing agent to reduce the partial pressures of the gases being removed.  The phenomenon of gas removal from water through the use of scrubbing in a deaerator can be accomplished in several different ways. 

With the scrubbing action occurring, the deaerator must vent the non-condensable gases into atmosphere.  Therefore, the only acceptable steam venting from a steam system operation is the Deaerator venting of non-condensable gases with a very small percentage of steam.  To accomplish this goal of venting non-condensable gases; the deaerator will vent a small percentage of steam.

Read more about deaerator venting…

http://www.plantsupport.com/download/PSE_BP_2.pdf