Boiler Chemistry and Feed Water Supplies (Classic Reprint)

Boiler Chemistry has not received the attention it merits. A more or less perfunctory analysis of the feed water, made with a view of dealing with the scale-forming constituents, is all that has hitherto been generally considered necessary for boiler work. Little or no investigation has been made, of the innumerable reactions that take place when natural waters are heated to some 400 F. under a pressure of fifteen to twenty atmospheres. Under these conditions new combinations are brought about and unthought-of reactions take place. A modem boiler is not merely a basin in which liquid water is converted into gas, but a receptacle for the mineral impurities contained, in greater or less quantities, in all natural waters even when softened. The boiler is in reality an autoclave in which chemical solutions are concentrated and partially evaporated at high temperatures and pressures, and should be looked upon as a chemical factory in which vairious chemicals are produced during the conversion of ordinary water from an initial temperature of, say, 60 F. into steam often highly superheated. Some of these reactions affect the steaming capacity of the boiler and others affect the metal of which it is constructed. If these reactions are not properly understood and properly controlled much damage may be done to the metal itself, even if that damage be not sufficient to cause explosion or render the boiler useless for steam-raising purposes. In the following pages a brief account is given of some of these reactions, and attention is called to the conspicuous part played by carbonic acid in boiler chemistry.
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)

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