Used Boilers
Used Hot Oil or Thermal Fluid Boilers
Hot Oil or Thermal Fluid Boilers often are used to heat equipment in process plant applications.
High temperatures can be reached using thermal fluid boilers vs steam.
The hot oil or thermal fluid is heated by passing the thermal fluid around electric heating elements. On lager units, the thermal fluid is passed though tubes or coils that are heated on the outside by a flame created by burning fuel.
The different fuels that are burned include Oil (typically # 2 or # 6 grade), Natural Gas, and combinations of Oil and Gas.
The typical configurations of hot oil heater/hot oil boilers are horizontal, vertical, or packaged design.
Used Steam Boilers
Boilers are used to create steam or hot water for process plant applications. Certain plants use steam or hot water (vs. a thermal fluid) to heat their reactors and heat exchangers for cooking their products. Boilers are also crucial in Power Generation plants or Co-Generation Plants where you use steam to generate electricity.
The steam or hot water is heated by passing water either through tubes or around tubes that are heated by a flame. The flame is created by burning some type of fuel. The different fuels that are burned include Coal, Pulverized Coal, Oil (typically # 2 or # 6 grade), Natural Gas or combinations of Oil and Gas.
There are also steam boilers that heat the water by using the waste heat generated from another process in the plant to heat the water to create steam. In the trash industry there are "Trash to Steam" boilers that burn trash to generate the steam.
The typical configurations of steam boilers are water tube and fire tube. This indicates whether the heat source surrounds the tubes and the water is in the tubes (water tube), or the heat source goes through the tubes and the water surrounds the tubes (fire tube). Many smaller boilers are the fire tube type, while many very large boilers are the water tube type.