Superheated steam has important advantages in certain applications, such as power stations to drive turbines. However, for efficient use of heating applications, however, the steam must be desuperheated. Which is specifically where the Desuperheater comes in to play.
Superheated steam is steam that is at a temperature higher than the saturation temperature for the steam pressure. They use the steam in power generation plants.
Superheating steam has a few advantages.
Superheated steam has several disadvantages.
These disadvantages meant that superheated steam is generally undesirable. It makes economic sense to desuperheat some of this steam in the power generation cycle and then use it for process applications.
Desuperheating is the process be which superheated steam is restoring it to its saturation state, or the superheat temperature reduces. Most desuperheaters used to restore the saturated state produce discharge temperatures approaching saturation.
When the desuperheater is operational, it adds a measured amount of water to the superheated steam within the desuperheater. As it enters the desuperheater, the cooling water evaporated by absorbing the heat from the superheated steam. Thereby reducing the temperature of the steam. Control of the amount of water to be added is usually achieved by measuring the temperature of the steam downstream of the desuperheater.
The two biggest areas of application for Desuperheaters are in power generation and the process industry. Desuperheaters within power generation are mainly used to reduce the temperature of steam from turbine bypass systems to an efficient level for operation on other parts of the plant requiring saturated steam for heat transfer purposes. In process industries, they use desuperheaters frequently as part of a system for reducing the temperature and pressure of steam from boilers to economical levels of operation. Here are some examples specifically of the process industry applications.
Komax has been leading the industry in Desuperheater Technology and serving process engineering for over 45 years. We have specifically applied Komax technology to over 100,000 installations worldwide. We offer a diverse range of Desuperheaters, including Steam Desuperheaters and LNG Desuperheaters. With technological superiority, the Komax Desuperheater provides a custom solution, high consistency, no moving parts, 3 stages of mixing, & our patented Equalizer™ Mixing Module: