Thermal Academy
Where every kcal counts
Academy › Faculty G
The Clinic — Troubleshooting & Reliability
Diagnosis-first: start from the symptom on the plant floor, reason back to the physics, then fix the cause — trap failures, surveys, stall, pumping and the ways steam systems eat themselves.
- G1300°12 minWhy steam traps failSteam locking, air binding, double trapping and stolen differential — the four impostors that condemn healthy traps.
- G2300°11 minTrap surveys and trap managementFinding the 15–25% of traps that have failed, pricing them honestly, and the register-and-route discipline that keeps them found.
- G3300°12 minStall and condensate pumpingReading the stall chart like a clinician, the NPSH arithmetic that rattles electric pumps, and the pressure-powered pump that ends it.
- G4300°11 minErosion and corrosion in steam systemsPipe forensics: carbonic acid, oxygen pits, flashing erosion and wiredrawing — read the failure, find the upstream cure.
- G5300°11 minTesting boiler efficiency on siteHow to run an efficiency test that survives a meeting — the boundary, the window, the four ways a test day lies, and what to do when direct and indirect disagree.
- G6300°11 minIs your heat exchanger fouling?One number — U, computed from four temperatures and a flow — catches fouling growing, names the cleaning date, and issues the receipt afterwards.
Free, vendor-neutral fundamentals from working practice. Teaching values — verify with certified data for design.