Miura boiler at Glen Raven Technical Fabrics facility in Glen Raven, NC |
“Demand swings greatly,” adds Harrington, “but we can fire the Miura EX-300 boilers off in sequence, so we don’t have a big boiler sitting there idle.”
Glen Raven’s multiple installation (MI) of these five compact steam boilers can be turned on or off in varying numbers to match prevailing load patterns, thus saving fuel and water, as well as minimizing the emissions typically produced by idling boilers. In addition, the NOx (nitrogen oxide) rating of Miura’s EX Series boilers can be as low 30 ppm, depending on the boiler model.
Miura Boiler also offers an MI controller that turns boilers on or off to match load patterns and achieve the highest possible in-service efficiencies, which are a measure of overall boiler performance (regardless of load profile) that takes into account all factors of boiler operation (combustion efficiency, thermal efficiency, fuel-to-steam efficiency, etc.) and total operation cycles.
The “once-through” design of the boilers turns water to steam in just five minutes and, on average, saves 20% in fuel costs over other boiler designs (based on today’s fuel costs). At a 20% fuel savings, this amounts to savings of about $200,000 a year in fuel for a typical 600 BHP steam system (with natural gas at $0.09/therm).
Harrington explains that Glen Raven’s five Miura boilers supply steam to the company’s process dye houses. “We’re heating water, and getting to temperatures of 265°F in pressure vessels to do textile dyeing,” he explains.
“We send steam about a quarter of a mile down the road to the other plant,” says Holt, “and we don’t have any problems with wet steam. Miura boilers are also safer and a lot easier to operate than the old boilers, with not near as much maintenance.
“With their computer controls, on-board diagnostics, and the safeties that are in there, Miura boilers just don’t require the high level of manual observation that old, larger boilers did,” agrees Harrington.
