Trap Inspection

Steam Trap Testing Services

Steam and energy conservation is a very important topic in today’s increasingly expensive energy environment. Steam systems represent a significant cost to any process facility. Inefficiencies due to plant additions, piping modifications, or malfunctioning steam traps caused by improper sizing, inappropriate selection, line clogging, or inefficient priming can often be identified. Steam trap testing provides a cost effective method to locate and identify these steam system deficiencies.

Consider the following example where as:

A boiler with an operating pressure of 450lbs, feed water temperature of 230F and efficiency of 81.7% has an estimated cost of steam of $8.59/1000 lbs.

.7 ($/therm) x 1000 x 1006 (Btu/lb) x 100 = $8.59/1000lbs 100,000 (Btu/therm) (@ 81.7 percent efficency)

A recent steam trap survey provided by Ware Inc. indicates that 3 steam traps located on a 150 lb line are not closing properly and have an estimated 1/16th gap each. The loss from these traps is calculated by the attached chart (Boiler Efficiency Institute) and the following calculation.

18.9 lbs/hr (3) x 8,760 hrs/yr x $8.59/1000lbs = $ 4266/yr

You can quickly determine that properly functioning steam traps may provide significant cost saving.

Ware Steam Trap Testing Services

Ware steam trap surveys include:

• Complete electronic file of the survey allowing you to analyze, sort, and work with the results in a manner that best suits your objectives
  • Why is a steam trap failing?
  • Is the installed trap appropriate for the application?
  • What problem is costing the most?
  • Failure rate on particular system, is it a particular type of trap or a particular manufacturer?
  • Where are the steam losses?
  • Where are the air losses?
  • Identify piping installation problems.
• All identified traps tagged with a stainless steel tag which corresponds back to the survey for fast location and identification.
• Hands on training for employees who participate in the survey.

The survey is performed by testing each trap ultrasonically as well as with a laser temperature gun. Each trap is tested on both the upstream as well as downstream side to indicate how well the trap is performing. We encourage customer participation in the survey to conduct these tests as well to get an understanding of what both properly and improperly operating traps sound like and temperature differentials to determine the condition of the trap.

Typical customer responsibilities include:

• One plant person per steam trap testing team.
• Any ladders or man-lifts to reach high up our out of the way traps.