New boiler treatment on the market.

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Pennsy fan
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New boiler treatment on the market.

Post by Pennsy fan »

This is a boiler treatment that has been used overseas for many years, and is now available to the US market.
The web site:
http://www.steamboilertreatment.com/index.html

Currently it is in the small 16 ounce bottle for the Live steam market, that will be eventually offered in larger quantities for larger boilers all the way up to full-size steam equipment.

The benefit of this particular treatment is it covers a lot of the issues that other boiler treatments have fallen short on and testing is easily done so you don’t waste treatment by guessing. Plus one of the other big benefits is it is based off of organically refined product that is safe for the environment and is not hazardous to anybody using it. No you shouldn’t drink it but common sense with any chemical should be used.

Currently has been distributed on the east and west coast in a limited format as to allow independent testing by owners to see how it performs in person, and the results coming back have been very good.

Thanks David.
SteveM
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Re: New boiler treatment on the market.

Post by SteveM »

It says it is for steel boilers or steel boilers with copper tubes, but no mention of copper boilers.

Steve
Soot n' Cinders
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Re: New boiler treatment on the market.

Post by Soot n' Cinders »

Interesting, so its a tannin product basically. Tannins are an interesting compound since they easily convert red rust to the more stable black rust, which is great for our boilers. The one issue Id run into with the product is the fact they use sodium hydroxide, or lye, as the pH buffer. I tried using lye before to buffer my boiler but found it caused issues for my water tank. After some research I found that lye and zinc react quite readily so it wouldnt take long before the lye leached out the galvanizing of my water tank as well as going after any brass fittings. So I buffer my pH with trisodium phosphate with much better results.
Ill be curious to hear how this new product works, but its at a disadvantage compared to LSB, its more than twice the price.
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SteveM
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Re: New boiler treatment on the market.

Post by SteveM »

Soot n' Cinders wrote: Mon Aug 24, 2020 8:34 amThe one issue Id run into with the product is the fact they use sodium hydroxide, or lye, as the pH buffer. I tried using lye before to buffer my boiler but found it caused issues for my water tank. After some research I found that lye and zinc react quite readily so it wouldnt take long before the lye leached out the galvanizing of my water tank as well as going after any brass fittings.
I think you can get around that by adding it directly to the boiler.

It is non-volatile, so what goes in the boiler, stays in the boiler (like Las Vegas). You put an ounce in the gallon in your boiler, drive all morning, refill the tender four times and use your axle pump and injectors to replenish the water in the boiler, and you still have one ounce in the boiler.

Here's what they say:
"This formula is Non-Volatile and will not travel with the steam. So once you have the initial dose fed in to the boiler it will stay at the concentration you started with. To make adjustments you will blowdown the boiler in small increments to drop the concentration and to add you will use the feedwater tank"

In fact, based on their description, it seems that you would not want to put it in the tender, as you would be increasing the concentration every time you add water from the tender, although I'm not sure what they mean by feedwater tank.

At least, that's my reading of their website.

Steve
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Pennsy fan
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Re: New boiler treatment on the market.

Post by Pennsy fan »

Hi All,
Let me address these questions.

The boiler treatment is a commercial product that is currently used in service in many different applications including where brass is involved and as far as galvanized tanks go, there has not been any reported issues with those particular interactions with those metals. This particular product is scalable as most boiler treatments for commercial operations are not. So if you’ve experienced leaching it may be the concentration you were working with may have been excessive and to cause the issues. But I will definitely pose the question to the Chemical engineering department of the manufacturer of the product.

This particular product has been used in Europe for probably over 20 years and most of their engines have a lot of brass as far as I know, and the people I know over there have not experienced any issues with brass leaching. I’m pretty confident that this is a relatively safe product as far as that goes.

The product is primarily for steel boilers to gain the most benefit from it, but the major benefit to this is that it controls foaming and carryover quite a bit more than anything else that is currently available for the Live Steamer market. Can you use this in a copper boiler, yes you can. But the only real benefit would be to reduce forming or carryover.

As far as price goes it is definitely more expensive, but this also covers a lot more issues than the current product available on the market. Organic products always cost more because of the cost of producing naturally occurring products versus synthetically derived chemicals.
But as far as cost versus other chemicals you will find that you will need literally no more than an ounce in most cases that’ll last you all day to all weekend without blowing your boiler down excessively. So the idea is you are using higher quality product but much lower quantity per runtime, and that’s equates to actually a lower cost.

The website is still being updated and will have more in-depth instruction and how to administer and test this particular treatment. Because of the virus obviously it’s been difficult to get multimedia projects completed, so patients will be needed at the moment.

In testing with a small group of Live Steamer‘s over the country they have found literally anywhere from a quarter ounce to maybe an ounce and a half has been all that’s been needed to treat the boiler. The typical Allen Engine was found to use a half an ounce was more than sufficient to properly dose the boiler for the day.
This product is designed to do a short term with Wet layup and it allowed the boiler to run basically for the whole week without having to blow down.

I’m sure you’ll have more questions and I will try to answer as much as I can.

Thank you for your interest and your great questions,
David.

And Tim M your order will go out today or tomorrow. Thank you.
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Pennsy fan
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Re: New boiler treatment on the market.

Post by Pennsy fan »

I’m posting a few images of product instructions and what you will see in the water glass. Basically a light to mid color tea that’s what you’re looking for in the sample bottle, which is calibrated to this particular product and is supplied with each bottle. But you’ll also see approximately the same color in the water glass depending on how bright it is in the cab.
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SteveM
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Re: New boiler treatment on the market.

Post by SteveM »

For the ignorant among us (that's me):
Pennsy fan wrote: Mon Aug 24, 2020 9:08 am The product is primarily for steel boilers to gain the most benefit from it, but the major benefit to this is that it controls foaming and carryover quite a bit more than anything else that is currently available for the Live Steamer market. Can you use this in a copper boiler, yes you can. But the only real benefit would be to reduce forming or carryover.
What is carryover?

Do copper boilers not get scale, and if they did, wouldn't this be beneficial to clean that out?
Pennsy fan wrote: Mon Aug 24, 2020 9:08 am As far as price goes it is definitely more expensive...
I'll bet it's not as expensive as a boiler!

This is what they found when they took Chuck Hackett's boiler apart:
Image

Anything that could have helped that would have been well worth it.

Steve
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Pennsy fan
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Re: New boiler treatment on the market.

Post by Pennsy fan »

Hi Steve, and I got your message and replied thank you.

Carryover is another word for foaming. What happens is that dissolve solids get to be so high in the boiler water content that water will start to travel with the steam out the dry pipe and cause a lot of excessive water to be delivered through the cylinders and the appliances.

The way you can recognize that is the water level you normally run stays the same but you will notice you will be getting a ton of extra water ejected through the exhaust, if you overfill the boiler that would be expected but in normal operation like if the water glass is half full you get perfectly dry steam. This will change when you start to foam or carryover.

As far as copper boilers go this product is intended to work with copper condensers in the commercial side but I don’t think this particular product would have much benefit in a copper boiler considering it basically works with rust.

There’s a ton of test data and proof that this functions very well in steel boiler applications but I haven’t seen much information on copper.

My regular job is working with boilers and anything related to heating and air-conditioning, so I have a pretty good grasp on most of the commercial products on the market and in this particular case I found this to be exceptional for the application I am applying to. Also spending the last 40 years around steam locomotives..
I’ve spent the last two years doing research and working with my chemical supply houses and manufactures I regularly deal with and some that I’ve had to research and find on my own don’t normally travel in my circles.
But like in most cases you still have to learn as you go, and I am happy to have people ask questions that I may not have thought of and then I can do the follow up and hopefully give a good response.
Glenn Brooks
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Re: New boiler treatment on the market.

Post by Glenn Brooks »

Interesting product. Thanks for making this available.

So, one question: when this product interacts with solids and rust, etc in the boiler, what happens to the residue? Does it build up on interior surfaces similar to scale? Blow out through the cylinders and stack in solution? Or just settle out into the boiler and get removed when you blow down?

Thanks
Glenn
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Pennsy fan
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Re: New boiler treatment on the market.

Post by Pennsy fan »

Hi Glenn,
The latter is correct, One of the chemicals in the product is to do exactly that. It’ll collect all the dissolved particles and hold them in suspension until you blow it down. This product does clean the boiler from deposits already on the existing steel in the boiler shell and tubes and will effectively clean the boiler over time to the point where you can actually drop the percentage of the chemical use just to provide a coating inside the boiler to help control dissolved oxygen in the future.
On the bottle is the different colors that you can run the treatment to, The lightest is the one it’s considered a maintenance level for most boilers. this particular product uses conductivity testing for how much suspended solids are in the boiler, not total dissolved solids. In the commercial world you have a conductivity test available to help control the amount of chemical needed. But for what we do we’re basically trying to keep the dissolved oxygen under control and provide the ability to control forming from the different waters that are used across the country in different boilers.

Reality is there is not one boiler treatment that can do it all perfectly, the point of doing a simple one step boiler treatment for hobby or low use boilers as what the product is aimed at. Depending on different water qualities it would not be unusual to add maybe an extra pH buffer or whatever might be a particular case that you may find excessive in your water. That’s why water testing can be so important to help you use the right chemical in the right area.

I have been talking to some of the tourist railroads and other large operators of large steam engines and they are interested but at this time everything is shut down. Just have to wait and see on that.
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Re: New boiler treatment on the market.

Post by Glenn Brooks »

Great, thanks. I’ll try a bottle. Will send a PM.

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