Welcome

Jayaraj. N
Chief Manager-Rtd
Chennai Petroleum Corporation Ltd
Chennai
njayaraj@gmail.com
+91 9444346268
 Let’s Discuss Safety in Boiler

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 Contents
1 Need for Safety

2 Safety Devices and

Procedures

3 Safety built in system

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 History behind Boiler regulations
After the improvised version of steam engine by James watt from 1769 to 1775, a lot
of improvements have been taken place in steam boilers.

In 1863, a severe explosion occurred in a boiler at Culcutta in which many life were
lost. This was the eye opener to recognize boiler inspection as an important activity
and a bill was introduced in the Bengal council to do inspection of boilers and the
Bengal Act VI of 1864 came in to force.

Indian Boiler Act 1923, provides for the safety of life and property of persons from the
danger of explosion of boilers.
The current version of these regulations is known as the Indian Boiler Regulations
1950 with lot of amendments subsequently.

Safety in Boiler is a continuous process and it keeps on improving.

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Major Types of Boiler

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 Safety
Work place safety refers to the working
environment of an industry.
It encompass all factors that impact the
safety, health, and well-being of
employees, equipment, machineries and
environment.

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Safety is an Investment
Safety programs are not only a good
investment, but yields good ROI.
It is one of the best investments a
company can make for yielding
improvements in productivity, lowering
maintenance costs and improving
retention of employees.

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 Major Types of Boiler failure

Boiler explosion is a catastrophic failure of a boiler.

There are two types of boiler explosions:
1) Failure of the pressure parts of the steam and water sides.
There can be many different causes, such as failure of the safety
valves, corrosion of critical parts of the boiler, or low water level.
Corrosion along the edges of lap joints was a common cause of early
boiler explosions.

2) Fuel side explosion in the furnace, which would more properly be

termed as a firebox explosion.

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 Failures Prevention
Caused due to lack of medium to remove
1 Melt down heat from the furnace. Maintain safe level
in steam drum.
When steam drum level is low, sudden
2 Thermal shock make up of lower temperature BFW,
causes sudden flash and expand to 1600
times. Avoid swing in level and sudden
make up of colder water.
3 Steam Pressure When steam pressure builds up due to
higher rate of firing or obstruction in steam
flow path, pressure builds up. Maintain
normal firing.

4 Combustion Explosion If unburnt fuel or the product of incomplete

combustion accumulates inside or outside
the boiler/furnace, it can catch fire/explode
when comes in contact with heat and
Oxygen. Maintain flame scanner healthy.
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Boiler explosion at a pharmaceutical
company, Dombivili

Every accident causes loss of life,

production, injury to the employees and to
those in the close proximity.
It damages the equipment.
Incurs maintenance cost.
Incurs expenditure for medical treatment
and damage claim.
To avoid these losses, safety is important.

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COURTESY: Impact of Boiler explosion

Loss of lives

Injury to the personnel

Damage to the environment

Loss of Production

Damage to equipment

Huge psychological impact

Incur huge loss of economy to

the organization for
maintenance cost, replacing of
equipment and compensation
to the suffered personnel.

This indicates the importance

of SAFETY.
 Expenditure on safety is an investment
 Safety is not a seasonal one.
 Safety should be the culture
of work practice.
 Safe work practice, in built
safety in the system, keeping
all the gadgets and
instruments linked with safety Aim for zero accident.
of equipment and process
should be always kept online.
 Be thorough with the work
Train the employees to operate the boiler
procedure. safely.
Train them to handle emergency operation
SAFETY REQUIRES without any fuzz.
STRONG COMMITMENT Develop a habit of using required PPEs
FROM THE TOP
always.
Log every activities and review the points
mentioned in the log book.
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 Equipment safety - steam and water side
Pressure safety valves:
 Safety valve spring applies pressure
against the valve seat.

 The spindle aligns the valve disc with the

valve seat.

 The try lever is connected to the spindle

with the try lever pin.

 Safety valve capacity is the amount of

steam in lb/hr or kg/hr that the safety valve
can vent.
 Only non-assisted type of PSV is permitted
in India.

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Safety valve rating
Discharged capacity of Safety Valve for Saturated steam:- IBR 1950, Regulation 293 says,
rated discharge capacity of safety valve which discharges saturated steam shall be calculated
by the equation: E = CAP; where, E = rated discharge capacity of saturated steam (kg/ hr)

P = highest pressure in absolute of any safety valve mounted on the boiler;

A = area (mm2). A is the area of the minimum bore of the body seat.

C is a constant taken from the following table, appropriate to the type of the valve or as
established by tests carried out.

Value for the constant ‘C’

Ordinary lift valve 0.05
High lift valve 0.10
Full lift valve 0.24

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 Safety valve lift
IBR 1950, Regulation 292:

Ordinary lift safety valve: The valve head lifts automatically a distance of at least D/24 with
an over-pressure not exceeding 10% of the set pressure. There shall not be any mechanical
stop which would prevent the valve head from being lifted a distance of at least D/8.

High lift safety valve: The valve head lifts automatically a distance of at least D/12 with an
over pressure not exceeding 10% of the set pressure, There shall not be any mechanical stop
which would prevent the valve head from being lifted a distance of at least D/8.

Full lift safety valve: The valve head lifts automatically a distance such that the area of
discharge which limits the flow through the valve is between 100% and 80% of the minimum
area at any section at or below in body seat. This lift is achieved by a rapid opening within an
over pressure not exceeding 5% of the set pressure.

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 Safety valve
Set pressure: It is the pressure that until the system pressure reaches to certain level, the
safety valve will not open or leak and this is known as set pressure.

Safety valves are generally designed to go full open within an overpressure level of 3%.
The safety valve closes when the system pressure reaches 95% of the set pressure. This is
called as reseat pressure. The percentage of this is called as percentage blow down and this
is limited to 5% max to avoid wastage of steam produced.

Capacity of PSVs are selected in such a way that the capacity of safety valves on drum and
super heater put together will be more than the 100% generation of the boiler.

The super heater safety valves set pressure is selected in such a way that they will pop/float
before the drum safety valves; otherwise the superheater can get damaged due to
overheating of tubes.

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Boiler drum water level
Level Indications: Gauge glass, level
transmitters, try cocks, DP cell, Float control etc.

Level control: To ensure that the right amount

of water is added to the boiler at the right time. 
Low water alarm: Low water alarm ensures that
the combustion of fuel does not continue if the
water level in the boiler has dropped to, or below
a predetermined low level. The lower of the two
alarms will ‘lockout’ the burner, and manual
resetting is required to bring the boiler back on
line.
High water alarm: The alarm operates if the
water level rises too high, informing the boiler
operator to shut off the feedwater supply. The
use of high level alarms is sensible as they
reduce the chance of water carryover and water
hammer in the steam distribution system.
BFW quality
To minimize premature failure of
tubes due to corrosion, pitting,
thinning out of the tubes feed water
quality should be maintained.

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 Fuel side safety
Principle behind Burner Management System-BMS:

 Steam drum, boiler tube and super heating coil should not be exposed to direct heat
without water/steam to remove heat.

 Purging the boiler to remove unburnt fuel mixture from the fire box before light up.

 Fire box should be purged thoroughly to remove any fuel mixture trapped inside the
box.

 Fuel should not be admitted before ignition system and flame scanner get ready.

 Maintain fire box pressure as per design.

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 Process safety

 Keep all interlocks online; if a situation warrants bypassing of an interlock, describe the
mitigation plan to carryout the work of the bypassed interlock and record the same.
 Follow LOTO system.
 Never operate the boiler more than its design capacity. If excess capacity is identified, then do
trial run by involving all the concerned official with the consent of the manufacturer and
develop a MOC.
 Check the operability of the rare operation devices such as FD fan dampers, stack dampers
etc.
 Keep fire fighting equipment accessible at all time.
 Always use the required PPEs.
 Never fail to report unusual behavior of a boiler or other equipment. It may be warning signal.
 Record all instrument readings in shift log book regularly.
 Keep MSDS display near the relevant chemicals using area.

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SAFETY
Factors that impact the
safety, health, and well-being
of employees, equipment,
machineries and
environment.
DEVICES
To safeguard the boiler from the
hazard of high pressure build
up, keep the PSVs healthy by
calibrating them periodically.
Recap
TRAINING
Expenditure incur on training
is an investment.
Train the employees, new
employees, retrain and
refresh the subject.
BFW QUALITY
Closely monitor & maintain
boiler feed water quality.
This will reduce fouling,
corrosion and pitting in boiler
tubes thereby avoiding
premature failure.
PROCEDURE
Be thorough with Operating
manual, SOP and use PPEs.
Log all activities and report
even small abnormalities.
LOGICS
Keep all process and
machine interlocks online.
Keep the BMS system
healthy and online.
Inculcate the habit of team
work.
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Team work ensures safety
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 Thank You All
Jayaraj. N
Chief Manager-Rtd
Chennai Petroleum Corporation Ltd
Chennai
njayaraj@gmail.com
+91 9444346268