Benefits of SMART Venturi Steam Traps

Steam traps have been widely used in steam heating and industrial process applications to separate condensate from steam. However, the most commonly used steam traps, i.e., conventional mechanical steam traps, pose various challenges in terms of maintenance and reliability. This is where venturi steam trap technology comes in as it offers a promising solution to the disadvantages encountered in other types of steam traps. Although the venturi technology has been around for nearly the past three decades, there hasn’t been significant growth in its adoption, despite the possibility it offers of combining operational efficiency with increased reliability. The venturi technology in steam traps virtually eliminates the possibility of live steam loss as a result of failed open traps, which in itself is a significant competitive advantage over other types of steam traps. Moreover, the low failure rate of venturi-type steam traps offers tremendous benefits in terms of energy savings and lower operational and maintenance costs. With this in mind, we at SMART Valves Inc. have been aiming to improve industries worldwide by becoming the leading manufacturer and supplier of high-quality venturi steam traps, which we refer to as SMART Venturi Steam Traps.

In this article, we will discuss some crucial benefits that you can get by installing SMART Venturi Steam Traps in your facility.

1) No moving parts to fail, no repair kits required

Conventional mechanical steam traps have a tendency to fail quite easily and are very challenging to maintain. In fact, it has been noted that each year, about 10% of mechanical steam traps fail in a steam system. Due to the high failure rate of the steam traps and the resulting shutdown of the plant, the businesses suffer significant financial losses. The problem with traditional mechanical steam traps is that they frequently fail because their moving components become trapped in either the open or closed position. To repair these mechanical traps, you need to keep dedicated repair kits which adds to your overall expenses. And in some cases, mechanical steam traps don’t even have the option to be repaired, which means that you need to replace the entire trap — again adding to your costs. However, when it comes to venturi steam traps, there are no moving parts inside them, which means there is nothing to fail. The venturi steam traps simply work based on the density difference between steam and water and they tend to give constant performance over their entire lifetime, which can be easily in excess of 20 years. Therefore, we at SMART Valves Inc. give a 20-year performance warranty for our SMART Venturi Steam Traps because we are confident that our products are durable and designed to last.

The only things that you need to keep with our SMART Venturi Steam Traps are Gaskets and Mesh, as these two components do not have a 20-year warranty, but only a 1-year warranty. Similarly, the traps with built-in strainers, designed to trap particles or contaminants before they reach the Venturi nozzle, also have a 1-year warranty for the strainers. For venturi steam traps starting with size 1″, they have no integrated strainers and require little to no maintenance. Hence, due to the increased efficiency brought about by using this technology, you won’t require maintenance personnel to carry out constant maintenance and replacement as in the case of conventional steam traps.

2) 10% to 30% permanent reduction in steam costs

When conventional mechanical steam traps are completely new, their performance is very similar to venturi steam traps. That means if you replace a failing steam trap with a new mechanical steam trap, the reduction in steam cost is going to be the same as replacing it with a venturi steam trap. However, the savings from mechanical steam traps are not permanent. The reason for this is that as mechanical steam traps age, their performance decreases rapidly. So if you test the same trap over the span of several years, you will notice the efficiency of the trap decreasing significantly as the mechanism inside the trap is not opening and closing as effectively as it did the day it was installed. When this happens, it starts passing some live steam through it, which is referred to as a steam leak. So with the passage of time, it starts leaking more and more live steam to a point where it is completely failed, either in the open position, thereby leaking all the live steam, or in the closed position, meaning that all the flow through the trap will be blocked. Neither of those conditions is good, meaning the trap needs to be replaced.

On the contrary, once you replace a failed steam trap with our SMART Venturi Steam trap, the improvements that you get from eliminating inefficiencies are permanent. Because our SMART Venturi Steam Trap doesn’t change performance/efficiency as it ages, this means that the savings that you get in the form of steam costs are permanent.

So, to sum it up, you have 2 options: you can either replace your failing steam trap with a mechanical steam trap, and it is going to show a consistent decline in performance over its lifetime, reaching a point of complete failure — the more there is the condensate load and the higher the pressure, the greater the frequency of mechanical steam traps to fail; or, you can go with SMART Venturi Steam Traps and get permanent efficiencies as their performance does not decline over their entire lifetime, which can be in excess of 20 years and covered by our performance warranty.

3) Can be custom-built for large capacity of up to 100,000 kg/hr. or 220,000 lbs./hr.

We at SMART Valves Inc. can build large-capacity steam traps, up to 220,000 lbs./hr., in a very short period of time. So, if you have a large size, large capacity trap requirement, which is very specific to your process application, we can design that trap for you from scratch with the required capacity and the needed materials and metal grades. In fact, we can complete the entire process from the design stage to the final delivery in a span of three weeks. So, if you are a company that has upcoming shutdowns and needs the replacement of some process steam traps or if a critical steam trap has suddenly failed in your facility, then you can contact us, and we will design and deliver custom-built SMART Steam Traps to your specifications at amazing speed and price.

4) Cannot fail open and has no steam leakage (Guaranteed for 20 years)

With every trap that we sell, our steam trap is guaranteed for 20 years that it will not leak steam or fail open. And there are only two conditions for how any steam trap wastes steam energy: it is either by starting to leak some live steam or by failing open. Once you eliminate these two conditions, the steam trap essentially is not wasting any energy and that’s what is preferred by clients. They tend to select trap that is basically designed in a way that it doesn’t waste energy through inefficiencies. And this is exactly what you get when you install our SMART Venturi Steam Traps in your facility.

5) Complete stainless-steel construction

We at SMART Valves Inc. build all our traps from stainless steel, either in grade 316 or 304, including all the parts and components inside the steam trap. The high strength and non-corrosive properties of stainless steel make it an excellent material of choice for an extremely versatile and durable venturi steam trap. The stainless-steel construction also allows for easy cutting, welding, forming, machining, and fabrication, thus allowing us to maintain the highest quality in our production.

6) Handles varying and constant loads at a turn-down ratio of 10:1

All our SMART Venturi Steam Traps are specifically sized to handle the maximum operating flow rate, as determined by the heat transfer process. The 10:1 turn down ratio means the boiler’s minimum operating load is 10 percent of the boiler’s full capacity. For instance, there is a boiler with a maximum capacity of 1000 lbs. and a minimum operating load of 100 lbs. The steam trap in that case, needs to be sized to work in that entire range so that no live steam is lost in that range. This kind of ratio is suitable for process applications where there are control valves, for instance, in the cases of process heat exchangers, evaporators, reboilers, batch and continuous process applications, etc. For applications where there is no control valve, the turn-down ratio is 5:1, so it is not as large as the one with a control valve.

7) Easily handles and resolves water hammer problems

Water hammer refers to a pressure surge, or wave caused when the live steam in the system is forced to stop or change direction suddenly. It can occur due to multiple reasons. For instance, you can experience a water hammer if the steam traps in your steam system are not draining a sufficient amount of condensate or the piping design is not correct, which limits the draining of condensate efficiently. It could also happen if some equipment in the system is not working correctly. Once the water hammer builds in the steam system, it basically puts enormous stress on any part or equipment of the system and even the valves. When it comes to the steam traps, the water hammer essentially smashes the internals of the mechanical steam traps. This is the reason why in situations where clients are experiencing a water hammer and there are steam traps close by, the internals of the steam traps constantly get smashed by the water hammer, and thus there is a need to replace those steam traps regularly.

With our SAMRT Venturi Steam Traps, there are actually no internal parts inside, and that helps to eliminate the issue of water hammer damaging the internals. For example, a famous refinery in Singapore reached out to us because they had a 4-inch trap on their heat exchanger constantly failing due to the water hammer issue. What happened was that the water hammer just smashed the internals of the trap, causing it to fail every 6 to 9 months. So, they initially reached out to the manufacturer of the mechanical steam trap to see if they could resolve the problem. The manufacturer suggested them to use a different type of trap with the same capacity, but the water hammer was still there and the issue did not resolve. Then, they reached out to us with their problem because frequently replacing the steam trap was not acceptable for them as they had to shut down the process very often, and it was not suitable for their manufacturing. So, we designed a SMART Venturi Steam Trap with a set that included a strainer and delivered it to them about 3 years ago and since then, the trap has been working fine with no complaints so far. So, the key to dealing with the issue of a water hammer is to have a steam trap in place that doesn’t have internals that can be damaged by a water hammer.

Another aspect of the water hammer issue is that the water hammer can sometimes be caused by a steam trap that is not draining enough condensate or because it’s working on an on/off principle, meaning it is holding some condensate and letting some of it go. When this happens, it means the cycle is not any more efficient, and the condensate is gradually backing up. So once you convert to SAMRT Venturi Steam Traps, they never hold back the condensate since they are constant discharge traps. In addition, we size our traps in a way that all the condensate in the process application is drained out immediately, thus never letting water hammer develop in the first place.