Title: Cycling-Up without Carryover? Truth or Dare
Presenter:
Louis Godbout, Director, R&D and Innovation, TGWT
Presentation Description:
Steam boilers are at the heart of our industrial civilization. The phenomenon of foaming and carryover has been subject to many misconceptions and erroneous explanations, such as “soapiness” due to high alkalinity or other surface tension effects. The true cause is a “water anomaly" that has been a subject of serious scientific study only since 1993.
In a boiler, salts in the feedwater will be concentrated as steam evaporates and will pose several challenges. Even if the trickiest ions, those that are responsible for scaling such as calcium and magnesium, have been removed by softeners, the other ions (sodium, potassium, chlorides, sulfates, silicates, etc.) in the boiler will lead to foaming and carryover above certain concentrations.
Louis Godbout, head of Research and Innovation Department at TGWT, will unveil the truth about unanticipated results of research on the reduction or elimination of carryover by tannin-based water treatments. He will dare to explain why typical antifoam agents may not be useful and may even be detrimental when attempting to use them to reach higher cycles of concentration. Finally, he will present a hypothesis as to how tannins function as antifoams.