From curative to predictive maintenance for steam installations

Decent maintenance can extend the life of your steam installation significantly. It also limits repair costs and reduces the chance of production stoppages. Therefore, in addition to curative maintenance, it is appropriate to focus as much as possible on preventive and predictive maintenance.

"When talking about preventive maintenance of a steam boiler, we distinguish between statutory and advised maintenance," says Ann Verhue, Business Unit Manager Maintenance at Callens. "The statutory maintenance is limited to the internal inspection of the boiler, the revision of the safety valves and checking for blockages of the various fittings and instrumentation. This also applies to the burner, which is regularly cleaned and tested."

"In addition to this legal maintenance, we advise our customers to replace a number of fittings and instruments (including safety valves, gauge glasses, ignition electrode, flame detection, degasser, spray tank, feed pumps, etc.) preventively in order to avoid unnecessary downtime and the associated production losses. We lay this down in a maintenance program in consultation with the customers."

“Our service department is currently evolving from curative to predictive maintenance, depending on the application," says Kris Stappers. "In doing so, we are taking into account the Belgian steam legislation of 1991. It stipulates that certain steam generators must undergo an internal and external inspection at least once a year, which always requires an on-site mechanical maintenance in preparation.

To enable our customers to enjoy real total care, we opt for steam installations that we can already monitor remotely in their entirety. We draw up a service plan that corresponds to the specific needs in order to achieve both a remote problem-solving approach and a daily, proactive follow-up of the installation. We then equip the installations with an advanced PLC and communication module, with which we connect ourselves. Those who opt for this proactive care can count on us to continuously monitor plant performance, water quality and efficiency. This is an addition to urgent notifications to which our specialists respond immediately."

The values to be monitored in predictive maintenance depend heavily on the specific processes and the interests of the users. "Standard parameters are steam pressure, gas consumption and the temperature of the feed water and flue gases," says Ann Verhue. "We can extend those to go to a full option energy calculation and monitoring of water quality and steam consumption."

"Since steam plants, by law, still require daily on-site monitoring today, the traditional way of doing things is still the most common. Yet we are seeing a turnaround," Kris adds. "The motivation for this is the shortage of technically skilled personnel and our customers' focus on their core business."