Different Materials in Superheaters boiler location steam temperature requirement

Superheater General Description

• In large capacity boilers with high superheat temperature of the order of 540 degree C and above, it is practically not economical to use a single material.
• The main single reason for this is due to the fact that the steam from boiler drum enters the superheater around 350 deg C and leaves around 540 deg C.
• As the steam travels from the drum take-off pipes to the roof tubes to the low temperature tubes and high temperature superheater outlet, it picks up temperature at each unit length of tube.
• This process changes the metal temperature of the tubes at each unit length of the tube. As the metal temperature of any tube increases there is a drop in the hoop strength of the tube material.
• This makes the requirement more stringent to the designers by forcing them to increase the thickness required to withstand the internal pressure in the tubes.
• However, because the thickness of the tubes cannot be increased beyond a certain range, this makes it necessary to upgrade the material of the tube to accept the increase in temperature.
• Designers use materials starting from carbon steel, to low alloy steel, to high alloy steel, and then to stainless steel to meet the requirements of the increase in metal temperature of the tubes as the steam picks up temperature in superheaters.

Superheater Location

• The location where such material transition requirement is fixed by the designers based on the margin between the allowable temperature for the material and the calculated metal temperature at the tube length.
• It is very critical to select this point correctly to avoid any tube failures in the superheaters.
• The point at which the difference between the allowable metal temperature and the predicted metal temperature can vary due to other reasons like low steam flow through the section of superheater due to high de-superheating water quantity, the upset in the radiation heat in the area, excess area for heat transfer provided, over loading of the unit, etc.

Differences

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