Answer: SMART Steam Trap is designed and sized to completely free up the condensate load produced by a certain application at a certain point in the system. In a SMART Steam Trap, steam moving with the speed of sound continuously forces denser condensate particles through a precisely sized orifice. These denser condensate particles prevent steam from escaping. Working at 100% capacity makes it easy to understand that a properly sized orifice device will lose no steam and retain no condensate. But the condensate loads don't remain constant and vary in concentration. So the question is, how efficient is a SMART Steam Trap in handling varying loads of condensate? As compared to a mechanical steam trap, does it lose steam when condensate load is below 100%?
A SMART Steam Trap efficiently handles varying loads of condensates than a mechanical steam trap in nearly all applications. The size of the venturi channel opening in a SMART Steam Trap is smaller than the opening of a mechanical steam trap. It is because a mechanical steam trap requires a larger orifice opening to handle the batch processing of larger condensate loads.
Also, continual flow technology is a phenomenon of two-phase flow physics. When the load is less than 100%, the physical effect of the two-phase flow and increase effect of the Venturi design results in hot condensate to be flashed which creates backpressure and stops steam from going through. However, denser element as condensate has enough weight and velocity to pass through this flash steam-created barrier. Even at the load capacity of 50% or below, there will be no or negligible steam loss through the Venturi orifice due to flash steam created backpressure.
SMART Valves Inc. recommends using SMART Steam Traps for applications where pressure varies and load may drop to 10% of capacity. If any issue persists when using SMART Steam Traps in varying pressure environments, it can be resolved by a modulating or solenoid control valve.

Answer: SMART Steam Traps are explicitly designed for and show the best performance on drip legs, tracing lines, unit heaters, steam headers, heat exchangers, submerged coils, jacketed coils, and more. They are being used in industries, whether small or large, have low-pressure systems or high, simple or complex, and have multi pressure or multi-process systems. They are used in every industry – Petrochemical, lumber, chemical, pulp and paper, packaging, pharmaceutical, food and beverage, hospitals and healthcare, power generation, small individual plants, and multi-operational, multi facilities to Fortune 500 companies, and more.
SMART Valve Inc. technology has replaced 99% of existing conventional traps on plants that are completely converted. It is the company's policy that it will not replace an existing Trap with the SMART Steam Trap if it cannot perform the specific task or if it leads to no or negligible economic benefits. Rarely possible, if the SMART Valve Inc. is found inappropriate for your facility, you'll be informed of the best alternative. Feel free to contact us for more information about our products and services. We are proudly operating and serving in the United States, Europe, Southeast Asia, and Western Asia.

Answer: Presently, Venturi technology has gained importance due to its best performance when it comes to making condensate free operating systems with minimum energy losses. Unlike mechanical steam traps, a SMART Steam Trap maintains the best performance from the day of its installation to its entire lifetime. This performance is guaranteed to remain stable over its lifetime because a SMART Steam Trap has a single solid-state construction with no moving parts, which allows it to work smoothly with consistent performance from day one.
SMART Valve Inc. is committed to providing operational and energy-efficient systems to its clients. The company keeps researching and adopting new technologies that show better results for condensate removal than the present techniques.

Answer: All mechanical steam traps fail in only two ways — failed open and failed closed. Let’s walk through each one of these and compare the failure mechanisms of venturi type SMART Steam Trap to mechanical type steam traps.

FAILED OPEN

MECHANICAL STEAM TRAP: This means that the mechanism that prevents steam from getting past the trap has “stuck open” and it is allowing steam to just blow through the trap. For example, a float and thermostatic trap has a float ball that actuates the valve that closes the downstream opening. When the attachment mechanism breaks. or the float loses buoyancy, the opening cannot be closed and steam will escape. Having live steam in the condensate system is not a good situation since now the pressure of the condensate system is at the same pressure as the steam system. This higher pressure and live steam can cause other steam traps to stop working which will lead to the condensate return system failing in multiple places. And with live steam leaking past the trap, steam wastage in the system will increase and cause the steam boilers to run more often with longer cycles, which increases fuel costs, raw water costs, and water treatment costs.

SMART STEAM TRAP: Since all SMART Steam Traps are Venturi type steam traps, they do not have internal mechanical parts at all, and all SMART Steam Traps cannot fail open.

FAILED CLOSED

MECHANICAL STEAM TRAP: This means that the mechanism that is supposed to hold the steam back has failed to operate and is in the “stuck closed” position. In this situation, condensate will form and will not be discharged from the trap. Condensate will continuously back up, eventually filling the heat exchanger and application inlet with warm condensate. In a heating application such as a radiator or a unit heater, this means that the heater will not produce the amount of heat that it is designed to produce. In a process application, this will result in a failure to heat the material properly, causing serious process yield or quality issues. From a safety standpoint, the meeting of cold condensate and the hot steam will produce a “water hammer”. In severe cases, the water hammer effect can cause valves and other system piping components to catastrophically rupture, spraying hot steam and warm condensate in the area of the failure.
SMART Steam Trap: Since SMART Steam Traps have no mechanical parts, they cannot fail closed in the traditional sense. However, if the channel opening at the mouth of the Venturi becomes clogged with debris from the steam system piping, condensate can begin to back up, and the results would be the same as explained above. To help prevent this situation from occurring, SMART Steam Traps have built-in strainers and bleed valve to prevent the channel opening from being clogged. These strainers are easily accessible for cleaning, and maintenance is done with a built-in integrated bleed valve. To blow down dirt or scale takes only 30 seconds to complete and can be done without isolating the steam trap station. Also, a good water treatment program needs to be put in place in addition to a good preventative maintenance program for Y-strainers and Mud Legs throughout the steam system. In summary, SMART Steam trap cannot fail closed in the traditional sense, but if built-in screen maintenance is not performed for multiple years, then the steam trap can fail temporarily closed on rare occasion, which would then require maintenance service to be performed after which your SMART Steam Trap would work again as on day one.

Answer: After installation and implementation of SMART Steam Traps, our customers report the following changes:
- A significant improvement in Facility and Equipment's operational efficiency.
- Improved product quality.
- Energy savings, 5-30%.
- Lower demand for water and chemicals of a similar amount.
- No demand for equipment repair expenses.
- Minimal condensate related equipment damage.
- Reduced costs for material purchasing.
- An improved facility and environmental safety.

Overall, it is observed that most of the customers gain project paybacks within 12 months or, in some cases, 6 months. These savings are repeated annually because the SMART Steam Traps provide a permanent solution with negligible maintenance if needed.

Answer: SMART Valves Inc. technically evaluates a system before sizing a trap to make sure that the delivered steam trap is installed correctly. This evaluation provides the necessary recommendations and actions to be considered.
A proper installation of the technology improves the operational efficiency of a steam system and helps collect accurate data in the future. That's why SMART Valve Inc's first step is to evaluate the system through discussion with the operational personnel, followed by the review of relevant drawings and then looking at the relevant segment of a system from the boiler to the end of the line.
Items reviewed during our technical evaluation includes:
- Equipment types and sizes
- Control valve sizes
- Insulation thickness
- Suitability of steam piping, indoor vs. outdoor, environmental factors including temperature, humidity, etc.
- Spacing between traps, traps location in the system, etc.
- Steam trap station layout
- Condensate return system, including piping design, where it is returned, pressure, distance, and more.

Answer: All SMART Steam Traps work on the constant discharge principle. That means that any condensate formed before the trap will be discharged ongoingly and immediately as it travels to the steam trap. Venturi-type traps do not have pulsating or ON/OFF cycles; therefore, the condensate discharge in correctly sized venturi trap may result in increased condensate draining volume. This extra condensate which before was sitting in pipes, if dumped on the ground in atmospheric pressure, can lead to the incorrect assumption that SMART Steam Trap is leaking the live steam. Instead, what is visible is a large amount of flash steam from condensate being discharged from the steam side to the atmospheric side and the pressure drop across the steam trap creates this flashing effect and is also the main mechanism of how the SMART Steam Trap itself regulate in variable load conditions. So, most of the situations that we see are flash steam vapor. Since our trap will have a higher rate of condensate discharge and keeps the steam dry, it can also generate a larger volume of flash steam compared to condensate drained from a mechanical steam trap or undersized venturi-type steam trap.
Live steam is invisible and generated by a boiler. When a trap is leaking live steam, the vapor cloud would not form white cloud-like vapors; instead, there could be even a short distance of space between the pipe end and visible vapor and the flow would be likely clear and relatively high velocity which is the part we see in the atmosphere. Also, there would be a significant temperature increase in condensate pipe surfaces where live steam is leaking. If you take either the thermal camera or infrared thermometer and measure the surface temperature of the condensate pipe after the steam trap, you can confirm, based on a temperature reading, that what is coming out is flash steam. We have encountered situations where the client is thinking that our trap is leaking steam and the next thing we ask them to do is to take a temperature reading after the trap, and they come back with a reading of 98⁰C (208⁰F). This is clear evidence that live steam would not be able to exist at those temperatures in the atmospheric system and the only other option is a flash steam vapor. Flash steam is created from hot condensate under pressure released to a lower pressure where part of it is re-evaporated, becoming what is known as flash steam. For our SMART Steam Traps, flash steam is generated in the venturi tube when hot condensate is discharged to the low-pressure side. Depending on this pressure differential, the portion of this condensate will be flashed, which will expand multiple times above the volume of condensate in the venturi tube to create backpressure that will separate live steam and condensate by letting condensate keep draining out and flashing at the end of condensate pipe before it reaches atmospheric pressure. However, live steam is blocked before the venturi tube by this flash steam created back pressure barrier. Since live steam does not have enough mass to overcome this pressure barrier, it is effectively pushed back and what we see at the end of the drip leg pipe before condensate is discharged to the ground most of the time is flash steam. Flash steam is visible and its vapors flash in the atmosphere as white cloud-like vapors. The amount of flash steam generated depends on steam pressure — the pressure in the condensate just before it leaves the steam trap — and the pressure in the condensate lines after the steam trap. Moreover, condensate formed at higher pressure has a corresponding higher temperature, which creates a higher % of flash and results in greater amounts of visible vapor. The high-pressure in drip legs and where condensate is discharged to the ground generate large flash steam vapor clouds which when combined with the sound of flashing make it difficult for an inexperienced person to distinguish the flash steam from live steam without taking temperature readings. Hence, they may think that the steam trap is leaking live steam when, in reality, it is not.

Answer: SMART Valve Inc. is committed to providing operational and energy-efficient systems to its clients. We collect data for various reasons:
It is important to have a thorough understanding of condensate loads and associated factors at each point a unit is installed in the system. These associated factors include steam type, unit operations, understanding of equipment, unit's location, nature of condensate being returned, the pressure of steam and condensate, distance between traps, indoor vs. outdoor system, piping design, and more. This understanding helps in properly sizing of a Trap, whether through Venturi Technology or Conventional Steam Trap Technology. It also helps in maximizing the efficiency of complete condensate removal with minimum energy loss.

Answer: The purpose of any condensate removal equipment is to free the system from condensate. The condensate forms when steam gives away its latent heat, and it condenses which imparts undesirable effects on the system, including:
- Corrosion and water hammer in the piping system
- Reduced heat transfer
- Increased equipment damage

It is, therefore, important to completely and efficiently remove condensates from the system.
Both the SMART Steam Trap and Conventional Mechanical Steam Trap come with an orifice. The orifice in a SMART Steam Trap, which we called Venturi tube, removes condensates through a non-moving and continual flow technology, whereas the orifice in Mechanical Steam Trap works on a batch system. They open in the presence of condensates and close in the presence of steam.
An optimally sized SMART Steam Trap works continuously in the lower end of a Steam loss to % Condensate Capacity chart whereas a Mechanical Steam Trap, either it's open/shut mechanism, works by internal floats, buckets, bimetals, bellows or discs, and increases in the upper ranges every time it opens. That's why an optimally sized SMART Steam Trap is 2-5% more efficient than a perfectly working brand new mechanical trap on the day of installation. This has been verified by several clients during laboratory and field testing. In each test, a properly sized SMART Valve Inc. built SMART Steam Trap showed superior performance.
This superior performance is the result of it not wearing out with time. Unlike Mechanical Steam Traps, it doesn't cycle several times per minute and, therefore, doesn't wear and degrade with time. That's the reason why mechanical traps fail to work properly within six months or less. Even the best quality mechanical traps that work 3-5 years before losing their functionality are subject to degrade early because of repeated cycles. That's why the entire mechanical trap population is working at 15-30% below its maximum, brand new efficiency. On the contrary, a SMART Steam Trap has no moving components, so it does not degrade, and even after years, its efficiency remains the same as day one.

Answer: To have a negligible failure rate (<5%), The Department of Energy has formulated the following guidelines for the facilities:
- Weekly assessment of its systems having 150 PSIG and above
- Monthly assessment of its systems in the range of 35-150 PSIG
- Annual assessment of its systems below 35 PSIG

Most of the employees and maintenance staff believe that these guidelines should be disregarded and immediate replacement of every trap shall be done upon degradation. Facilities do not have sufficient budgets to do so. A weekly assessment of 500 units in the facility would demand two or three full-time workers. Then consider the staff members needed to change damaged/degraded units as they are found along with the cost of replacement traps, fabrication, sectional shut down, and installation. Finally, it can be seen that such recommendations are not just practical. Steam traps are usually considered a low priority item and are replaced on an 'as required' basis.
Consequently, The Alliance to Save Energy states in its studies that 15-20% of Steam Traps will be non-functional (completely failed either open or closed) in a facility. Another observation revealed that 36% of the examined traps were found completely non-functional. SMART Valves Inc. built SMART Steam Traps are permanent technology – To the present day, SMART Valves Inc. has never received a single returned unit of Steam Traps for poor performance or degradation. Facilities that converted to our units 10 years ago report that the units are working absolutely fine and perfect with almost no maintenance requirements. Their performance today is no different than it was on the first day of installation. Analysis of Plants by SMART Valves Inc. after 13+ years of installation of SMART Steam Traps revealed zero wire draw on every inspected unit, same performance measurements on every tested unit from day one, and no change in pressure at any point along the entire operating system. Even the chemical and corrosion problems on the systems were resolved with a Y strainer's blowdown program that comes with each SMART Steam Trap.