STEAM TRAPS

Waste heat revalorization for the total lithium battery suppresion in steam pipeline sensing

These are the typical steam traps located in a medium-sized oil refinery

A conventional locked steam trap lose from 4 kg/h up to 15 kg/h of steam.

Working 8,000 hour / year, with 15 kg/h of Steam at 10 USD / 1000kg.

1st pilot developed for measuring steam leaks in a steam pipe of soybean plant. Equipment fully powered by waste heat.

LoRaWAN IoT device with 2km of wireless range, developed under ATEX constraints, measuring Delta T in the steam trap every 2 minutes.

Ultrasound fine tunning to detect steam whislisting in combination with Delta T, to supress false-positives commonly found in previous versions.

Uses waste heat from the steam pipeline for powering the steam leaks detection devices:
- Temperature 120º
Fast and low-cost deployment: estimated ROY of 10 months
High precision and accuracy
- Inlet/outlet temperature and high spectrum ultrasounds
Savings up to 1,200 USD / year / unit:
- Steam leaks
- Audits
- Battery replacements

Project cofinanced by the Catalan Government- ACCIÓ- Nuclis d’economia Circulat.