basically a closed vessel into which water is heated until the water is converted into steam at required pressure. • The heated or vaporized fluid exits the boiler for use in various processes or heating applications. • Boiler or more specifically steam Working Principle of Boiler • The basic working principle of boiler is very, very simple and easy to understand. • The boiler is essentially a closed vessel inside which water is stored. • Fuel (generally coal) is burnt in a furnace and hot gasses are produced. • These hot gasses come in contact with water vessel where the heat of these hot gases transfer to the water and consequently steam is produced in the boiler. • Then this steam is piped to the turbine of thermal power plant. Materials • The pressure vessel of a boiler is usually made of steel (or alloy steel), or historically of wrought iron. • In live steam models, copper or brass is often used because it is more easily fabricated in smaller size boilers. Fuel • The source of heat for a boiler is combustion of any of several fuels, such as wood, coal, oil, or natural gas. • Electric steam boilers use resistance- or immersion-type heating elements. • Nuclear fission is also used as a heat source for generating steam. History • "Pot boiler" or "Haycock boiler“ • A primitive "kettle" where a fire heats a partially filled water container from below. • 18th century Haycock boilers generally produced and stored large volumes of very low-pressure steam, often hardly above that of the atmosphere. Types of Boiler • Fire-tube boiler • Water-tube boiler Fire-tube Boiler • As is indicated from the name, the fire tube boiler consists of numbers of tubes through which hot gasses are passed. These hot gas tubes are immersed into water, in a closed vessel. • Actually in fire tube boiler one closed vessel or shell contains water, through which hot tubes are passed. These fire tubes or hot gas tubes heated up the water and convert the water into steam The advantage of fire tube boiler • It is quite compact in construction. • Fluctuation of steam demand can be met easily. • It is also quite cheap. The disadvantage of fire tube boiler
• As the water required for operation
of the boiler is quite large, it requires long time for rising steam at desired pressure. • As the water and steam are in same vessel the very high pressure of steam is not possible. • The steam received from fire tube boiler is not very dry. Water-tube Boiler • A water tube boiler is such kind of boiler where the water is heated inside tubes and the hot gasses surround them. • This is the basic definition of water tube boiler. Actually this boiler is just opposite of fire tube boiler where hot gasses are passed through tubes which are surrounded by water. Advantages of water tube boiler • Larger heating surface can be achieved by using more numbers of water tubes. • Due to convectional flow, movement of water is much faster than that of fire tube boiler; hence rate of heat transfer is high which results into higher efficiency. • Very high pressure in order of 140 Disadvantage of water tube boiler • The main disadvantage of water tube boiler is that it is not compact in construction. • Its cost is not cheap. • Size is a difficulty for transportation and construction.