On-line Data Brings Boiler Operators Up To Speed

Dr. Triveni P. Shukla, Vice President of Technology Development at FiberGel Technologies, developed the processes that made Z-Trim - a corn bran derivative fat substitute - commercially viable.

FiberGel has two production lines, including equipment such as a centrifuge, drum dryer, milling, sifting, bagging and sealing machines. It sells its products in several forms. But initially, the plant produces Z-Trim, as either a wet gel or dry powder. The processes use fifty thousand gallons of water per day. More than half of the fifty thousand gallons of water is used to raise the temperature of water to 185° or 190° F. Once they’ve created the gel, some of it is dried to make the Z-Trim powder. The other half of the fifty thousand gallons of water is used in this process to create the powder.

Dr. Shukla describes an unusual technology unique to Miura boilers, “The efficiency of the boilers is clearly why we selected the Miuras - in terms of space for installation and in terms of converting water into steam. We are using less cubic feet of gas to produce a pound of steam at one hundred twenty-five psi. It is a very automated boiler. They sold us, along with the boilers, a computer program that I can feed to my master system and I can almost watch the efficiency of the boiler. You can see what it is doing and it records the boilers activity over time. Since the second shift - the night shift - has no attendant, I use this history to instruct the day shift operators. I can show them that at such and such time, so many hours into production there was less steam and why. They will know, then, how to manage the process in accordance with how many pounds of steam are available and at what psi.”

FiberGel Technologies installed two Miura LX (Low NOx) 100 BHP Boilers. The system is called the Miura Boiler Monitor (MBM). It was designed to enable customers to do basic trouble shooting of their boilers, themselves. A cable is hard-wired in a daisy chain, going from boiler to boiler. The computer that formats and displays the boiler data can be up to 3,000 feet from the boiler/s. Thirty-one days of boiler operating data can be viewed on the computer screen.

To ensure immediate comprehension of the boiler data it presents, MBM uses an intuitive approach to the organization of the data. Since an operator always wants a reminder of what a boiler’s settings are, the settings are grouped on one screen. Another screen pictures (literally in diagram form) the real time, current boiler status (valves on or off, temperatures, PSI, and conductivity).