While steam consumption, leakages, and other heat transmission losses can contribute to overall energy bill, this article focuses on heart of steam generator - boiler.

Controlling boiler is of utmost importance in any steam generation energy saving program. Below are some ways to improve boiler efficiencies:

1. Reducing excess air 2. Installing economizer 3. Reducing scale and deposits 4. Reducing blow down 5. Recovering waste heat from blow down 6. Stopping dynamic operation 7. Reducing boiler pressure 8. Operating at peak efficiency 9. Preheating combustion air 10.Switching from steam to air atomization 11.Switching to lower cost fuel

Reducing Excess Air

By far most common reason for energy inefficiencies in a boiler can be attributed to use of excess air during combustion at burners. When there is more air than is required for combustion, extra air becomes heated up and is finally discharged out to atmosphere. However, there are reasons for putting in some extra air for combustion - to compensate for imperfect burner fuel-air mixing conditions, air density changes, control system "slop", burner maintenance, fuel composition and viscosity variation, and imperfect atomizing steam or air controls for burners.

Adjusting fuel-air ratio for combustion can be quite tricky. If fuel is too much as compared to air, incomplete combustion occurs. This will give rise to carbon soot deposits inside combustion chamber or even over boiler tubes.

The consequences of having soot deposits over heat transfer surfaces and potential of having explosive flue gases inside boiler are much worst than losing a slight amount of energy through exhaust stack. Therefore, many boiler operators choose to adjust their burners to be slightly on excess air.

Installing Economizer

This is only appropriate if there are insufficient heat transfer surfaces in boiler. The economizer tubes may contain either circulating boiler water or circulating feed water. Because temperature of exhaust gases can be quite high, economizer tubes may be fitted with safety valves to avoid over-pressure damage. Also temperature control of feed water is required to prevent pump airlock. To avoid corrosion, careful design is needed to ensure that exhaust flue gas temperature does not drop below dew point.

Reducing Scale and Deposits

For any boiler operation, this is a must. The safety of boiler is at stake. Any scale or deposits will lead to reduced heat transfer that will eventually lead to overheating, reduction of mechanical strength of steel and finally to bursting.

This should already be in normal daily procedure of boiler operation.

Reducing Blow down

Although they are darlings of media and generic for flat panel display in minds of many, plasmas are about to be in a serious fight with other technologies for flat panel crown.

LCD displays, seen on desktop for years as computer monitors, and commonplace in smaller flat panel TVs, are finally increasing in size to point they are becoming a rival to plasmas in 42" – 50” size range. Picture quality is similar to plasmas; however LCDs are immune to burn-in that can affect plasma displays. This burn-in occurs when plasma units are used to display static images such as video game screens and stock or sports tickers.

Plasmas generally have an edge in ability to produce deeper blacks and more saturated colors than LCDs. Plasmas are also better at producing full motion video than LCDs because of response time of LCD panels, although this difference is disappearing.

LCD TVs are a bit more expensive than plasmas at 42" and larger sizes, but they should last a while longer. Plasma displays should last 20,000 – 25,000 hours and LCDs should give 30,000+ hours of useful life. However, latest generation of plasma displays from NEC is claimed to have a 60,000 hour life. If that is an industry trend, traditional lifespan advantage held by LCDs may soon disappear.

Currently Sony has a 42", NEC a 40", Sharp a 45", and Samsung a 40" LCD TV or display. Samsung also has big one, a 46" that started shipping in early September of 2004. The Samsung 46" was first consumer LCD video display to have a 1080 line native resolution. This allows it to display 1080p native when that format arrives for HDTV.

Other technologies are on horizon as well. One that has shown great promise is OLED, for Organic Light Emitting Diode. Developed by Kodak and Pioneer, this technology has been used for a few years in car stereo and cell phone displays. It's just about ready for prime time. Philips has shown a 13" unit, Samsung a 17", and Seiko-Epson has shown a 40" prototype.