BOILER

• Steam boiler or simply a boiler is

basically a closed vessel into which
water is heated until the water is
converted into steam at required
pressure.
• The heated or vaporized fluid exits
the boiler for use in various processes
or heating applications.
• Boiler or more specifically steam
Working Principle of Boiler
• The basic working principle of
boiler is very, very simple and easy to
understand.
• The boiler is essentially a closed
vessel inside which water is stored.
• Fuel (generally coal) is burnt in a
furnace and hot gasses are produced.
• These hot gasses come in contact
with water vessel where the heat of
these hot gases transfer to the water
and consequently steam is produced
in the boiler.
• Then this steam is piped to the
turbine of thermal power plant.
Materials
• The pressure vessel of a boiler is
usually made of steel (or alloy steel),
or historically of wrought iron.
• In live
steam models, copper or brass is
often used because it is more easily
fabricated in smaller size boilers.
Fuel
• The source of heat for a boiler
is combustion of any of several fuels,
such as wood, coal, oil, or natural gas.
• Electric steam boilers use resistance-
or immersion-type heating elements.
• Nuclear fission is also used as a heat
source for generating steam.
History
• "Pot boiler" or "Haycock boiler“
• A primitive "kettle" where a fire heats
a partially filled water container from
below.
• 18th century Haycock boilers
generally produced and stored large
volumes of very low-pressure steam,
often hardly above that of the
atmosphere.
Types of Boiler
• Fire-tube boiler
• Water-tube boiler
Fire-tube Boiler
• As is indicated from the name, the fire
tube boiler consists of numbers of tubes
through which hot gasses are passed.
These hot gas tubes are immersed into
water, in a closed vessel.
• Actually in fire tube boiler one closed
vessel or shell contains water, through
which hot tubes are passed. These fire
tubes or hot gas tubes heated up the
water and convert the water into steam
The advantage of fire tube boiler
• It is quite compact in construction.
• Fluctuation of steam demand can be
met easily.
• It is also quite cheap.
The disadvantage of fire tube boiler

• As the water required for operation

of the boiler is quite large, it requires
long time for rising steam at desired
pressure.
• As the water and steam are in same
vessel the very high pressure of steam
is not possible.
• The steam received from fire tube
boiler is not very dry.
Water-tube Boiler
• A water tube boiler is such kind of
boiler where the water is heated
inside tubes and the hot gasses
surround them.
• This is the basic definition of water
tube boiler. Actually this boiler is just
opposite of fire tube boiler where hot
gasses are passed through tubes
which are surrounded by water.
Advantages of water tube boiler
• Larger heating surface can be
achieved by using more numbers of
water tubes.
• Due to convectional flow, movement
of water is much faster than that of
fire tube boiler; hence rate of heat
transfer is high which results into
higher efficiency.
• Very high pressure in order of 140
Disadvantage of water tube boiler
• The main disadvantage of water tube
boiler is that it is not compact in
construction.
• Its cost is not cheap.
• Size is a difficulty for transportation
and construction.