Over 75% of the existing fire tube and water tube boilers are more than 25 years old,
and they're due for replacement. What if there was a way to save energy... and the environment?
Rising energy costs...Global warming concerns...Btu consumption by the quadrillions!
The Energy we waste is the most ready-use energy available to us today.
We NEED to improve efficiency!
The solution to our energy problem is technology.
Industry is addressing the challenge!
We have learned to listen to industry and the experts.
Progress is underway on several fronts,
including emerging solutions to modernize our industrial boiler population.
1999: An aggressive DOE initiative combined government, science, and industry
into a meaningful coalition for proactive change.
The Super Boiler project had begun!
Enter Gas Technology Institute, a leading research, development, and training organization serving the natural gas
industry and energy markets. GTI would develop the new Super Boiler concept.
The task: Combine a proven, packaged boiler platform with an advanced burner, delivering ultra-low emissions.
With applied nanotechnology, dramatically higher fuel-to-steam efficiencies
would happen within a compressed footprint.
Momentum grew as others joined.
Utilization Technology Development (UTD), a coalition of natural gas distribution companies
supporting collaborative research related to end-use applications. And Cleaver-Brooks,
a major manufacturer of packaged boilers.
Technology development focused on four interrelated approaches:
Significant energy savings, substantial emissions reduction, reduced boiler footprint,
and state-of-the-art controls optimizing performance and sustainability.
Specification Rubber Products was selected as an initial test site to prove the concept
could be scaled up in a tough industrial environment.
Located just outside Birmingham, this subsidiary of American Cast Iron Pipe Company
produces rubber parts for the water works industry.
Supported by Alabama Gas Corporation, Specification Rubber operates a 300-horsepower Cleaver-Brooks
high-pressure steam Super Boiler 24/5. It's been running with excellent results since mid-2006.
Every industrial account that we serve has a global competitor somewhere.
So we're looking for each and every avenue to take cost out of our product.
The natural gas boiler has produced NOx levels below 9 parts per million.
Fuel-to-steam efficiencies are consistently 93% to 94%.
We overcame all the obstacles,
resulting in a boiler that is now the most efficient high-pressure steam boiler in the world.
Let me say that again, the most efficient high pressure steam boiler in the world is outside this building,
operating at Specification Rubber. We are very excited.
This is a direct response to what our customers have been asking for for years.
The installation of the Super Boiler has allowed us to save about 13% of our natural gas usage
and approximately 20% of our water usage. A second installation is progressing at
Clement Pappas, a juice bottler and customer of Southern California Gas Company.
Several California State agencies have also partnered in the development and demonstration of this technology.
The technology was also partially funded by the California Air Resources Board's
Innovative Clean Air Technologies program.
Third Dimension, a producer of packaging for kitchen cabinets, hosts a third site in Utah.
At all of these sites, further improvements to the technology will move the project toward full commercial status.
Since 1999, the Department of Energy and its partners have forged a clear direction in the quest to reduce
dependence on imported fuels while conserving the finite resources of oil and gas,
and improving the quality of air we breathe.
As global warming concern captures public awareness, one fossil fuel continues to burn cleanest—natural gas.
Although debate over emissions continues, reducing carbon-based fuel use will cut tons of carbon
dioxide out of our atmosphere, lessening concern over global warming.
The Energy Policy Act, signed by President Bush in 2005, allows the DOE to form voluntary partnerships
with companies committed to reducing industrial energy (intensity) by 2.5% annually through 2016.
The Act, combined with Super Boiler technology,
provides DOE the incentive and means to achieve this worthy goal.
Right now, 210,000 fire tube boilers are in the marketplace. 80,000 are over 25 years old
with an average fuel-to-steam efficiency of just 75%.
The time is right to begin retrofitting or replacing, and conserving energy while reducing
noxious, smog-forming pollutants.
The time is right to think globally and act locally!
It's great to have a Super Boiler.
That's good, good news!