The old boiler at the mill taught me a lesson last Tuesday

I was working on this old firetube boiler at a paper mill up in Green Bay. The thing had been running since the 70s, and I figured I'd just patch a leaky tube the way I always do. But the tube ended up cracking worse when I tried to roll it in. Found out the metal had gotten brittle from years of hard water deposits, something I never checked for on older units. Now I always do a hardness test first, anyone else run into that issue with really old boilers?

2 comments

2 Comments

miab8728d ago

Along those same lines, something else to keep in mind is that old boilers can also suffer from embrittlement from the caustic chemicals used in water treatment over the decades. I've heard stories where guys tried to patch a seam and the metal just crumbled like dry clay around the weld. Your mileage may vary, but a hardness test and a quick look at the water treatment logs can save you a whole lot of headache.

verap5228d ago

Yeah the hard water deposits are a real killer on those old firetube boilers. I had an 80s era boiler at a factory up in Duluth where the tubes looked fine on the surface but were basically eggshells inside from scale. Now I always pull a small sample with a tube cutter before I even think about rolling anything in.