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.

A high pressure water-tube boiler is a type of boiler in which water circulates in tubes
heated externally by the fire. Fuel is burned inside the furnace, creating hot gas which heats
water in the steam-generating tubes. In smaller boilers, additional generating tubes are separate
in the furnace, while larger utility boilers rely on the water-filled tubes that make up the walls of
the furnace to generate steam.

High Pressure Water Tube Boiler:

The heated water then rises into the steam drum. Here, saturated steam is drawn off the top of the
drum. In some services, the steam will reenter the furnace through a superheater to become
superheated. Superheated steam is defined as steam that is heated above the boiling point at a
given pressure. Superheated steam is a dry gas and therefore used to drive turbines, since water
droplets can severely damage turbine blades.

Cool water at the bottom of the steam drum returns to the feedwater drum via large-bore
'downcomer tubes', where it pre-heats the feedwater supply. (In large utility boilers, the
feedwater is supplied to the steam drum and the downcomers supply water to the bottom of the
waterwalls). To increase economy of the boiler, exhaust gases are also used to pre-heat the air
blown into the furnace and warm the feedwater supply. Such watertube boilers in thermal power
stations are also called steam generating units.

Advantages of Water Tube Boiler

There are many advantages of water tube boiler due to which these types of boiler are essentially
used in large thermal power station.

1. Larger heating surface can be achieved by using more numbers of water tubes.
2. 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.
 3. Very high pressure in order of 140 kg/cm2 can be obtained smoothly.

Water tube boiler design and working

In a typical Water tube boiler design as shown in the figure, it consists of two drums the
steam drum and the water or mud drum. On this design straight tubes were rolled into mud drum,
and the front headers were connected to the steam drum. The rear header was connected to a
horizontal box header, which was also attached to the steam drum. The tubes were inclined to
promote water circulation. There was also a spring loaded safety valve on top of the steam drum.
In a water tube boiler fuel is fired into a water cooled furnace. Sheet metal and refractory
enclosing the boiler called casing. At the end of the furnace, the flue gas turns into the
convection section and travels towards the stack.

All boilers have a radiant and a conviction sections, tubes around the furnace are called
generation or riser tubes about a half of steam is generated in this area rest of the steam is
produced in the convection section. Water inside the tubes become hot and due to natural
circulation steam is collected and separated in the steam drum. Pre heated (economiser) Feed
water is continually feed in the steam drum with feed water pump.

These boilers were common in the paper making, sugar and other Industries which had
big demands for electrical power and steam. Steam generated at high pressure and superheated
would be fed to a turbine driving an alternator to generate electricity. Low-pressure steam
leaving the turbine would then be used for the process. The smaller water tube boilers can be
built at the manufacturers and delivered to site as one-unit package water tube boiler. Most
boilers, however, are built in sections and erected on the site.

Working Principle of Water Tube Boiler

The working principle of water tube boiler is very interesting and simple.

Let us draw a very basic diagram of water tube boiler. It consists of mainly two drums;
one is upper drum called steam drum other is lower drum called mud drum. These upper drum
and lower drum are connected with two tubes namely down-comer and riser tubes as shown in
the picture. Water in the lower drum and in the riser connected to it, is heated and steam is
produced in them which comes to the upper drums naturally. In the upper drum the steam is
separated from water naturally and stored above the water surface. The colder water is fed from
feed water inlet at upper drum and as this water is heavier than the hotter water of lower drum
and that in the riser, the colder water push the hotter water upwards through the riser. So there is
one convectional flow of water in the boiler system.water tube boiler

More and more steam is produced the pressure of the closed system increases which
obstructs this convectional flow of water and hence rate production of steam becomes slower
proportionately. Again if the steam is taken trough steam outlet, the pressure inside the system
falls and consequently the convectional flow of water becomes faster which result in faster steam
production rate. In this way the water tube boiler can control its own pressure. Hence this type of
boiler is referred as self-controlled machine.
Design Variations of Water-tube boiler

D-type Boiler

The 'D-type' is the most common type of small- to medium-sized boilers, similar to the
one shown in the schematic diagram. It is used in both stationary and marine applications. It
consists of a large steam drum vertically connected to a smaller water drum (a.k.a. "mud drum")
via multiple steam-generating tubes. These are surrounded by walls made up of larger water-
filled tubes, which make up the furnace.

M-Type Boilers
 The M-Type boilers were used in many US World War II warships including hundreds of
FLETCHER class destroyers. Three sets of tubes form the shape of an M, and create a separately
fired superheater that allows better superheat temperature control. In addition to the mud drum
shown on a D-type boiler, an M-Type has a water-screen header and a waterwall header at the
bottom of the two additional rows of vertical tubes and downcomers.

Low Water Content

The 'Low Water Content' boiler has a lower and upper header connected by watertubes
that are directly impinged upon from the burner. This is a "furnace-less" boiler that can generate
steam and react quickly to changes in load.

Babcock & Wilcox boiler

Designed by the American firm of Babcock & Wilcox, this type has a single drum, with
feedwater drawn from the bottom of the drum into a header that supplies inclined water-tubes.
The watertubes supply steam back into the top of the drum. Furnaces are located below the tubes
and drum.

This type of boiler was used by the Royal Navy's Leander-class frigates.

 Foster Wheeler
 Combustion Engineering

Stirling boiler

The Stirling boiler has near-vertical, almost-straight watertubes that zig-zag between a
number of steam and water drums. Usually there are three banks of tubes in a "four drum"
layout, but certain applications use variations designed with a different number of drums and
banks.

They are mainly used as stationary boilers, owing to their large size, although the large
grate area does also encourage their ability to burn a wide range of fuels. Originally coal-fired in
power stations, they also became widespread in industries that produced combustible waste and
required process steam. Paper pulp mills could burn waste bark, sugar refineries their bagasse
waste. It is a horizontal type of boiler.

Yarrow

Named after its designers, the then Poplar-based Yarrow Shipbuilders, this type of three-
drum boiler has three drums in a delta formation connected by watertubes. The drums are linked
by straight watertubes, allowing easy tube-cleaning. This does, however, mean that the tubes
enter the drums at varying angles, a more difficult joint to caulk. Outside the firebox, a pair of
'cold-leg' pipes between each drum act as 'downcomers'.

Due to its three drums, the Yarrow boiler has a greater water capacity. Hence, this type is
usually used in older marine boiler applications. Its compact size made it attractive for use in
transportable power generation units during World War II. In order to make it transportable, the
boiler and its auxiliary equipment (fuel oil heating, pumping units, fans etc.), turbines, and
condensers were mounted on wagons to be transported by rail.

White-Forster

The White-Forster type is similar to the Yarrow, but with tubes that are gradually curved.
This makes their entry into the drums perpendicular, thus simpler to make a reliable seal.

Thornycroft

Designed by the shipbuilder John I. Thornycroft & Company, the Thornycroft type
features a single steam drum with two sets of watertubes either side of the furnace. These tubes,
especially the central set, have sharp curves. Apart from obvious difficulties in cleaning them,
this may also give rise to bending forces as the tubes warm up, tending to pull them loose from
the tubeplate and creating a leak. There are two furnaces, venting into a common exhaust, giving
the boiler a wide base tapering profile.
Water tube boiler parts and their functions

There are many pressure parts and non-pressure parts in a water tube boiler we only discuss main
water tube boiler parts and function.

Steam drum

Steam drum is a collection vessel for steam & water. Here water & steam is separated. It
has steam separators. Steam goes from top side to superheater & water goes from the bottom
through down comer Mud drum, then to furnace bottom ring headers (bottom of furnace water
wall).

It has two types of draining arrangement (a) CBD- continuous blow down used when
Si02 or TDS is on the higher side. (b) Emergency blow down is used when drum level is high
high. Boiler mountings and accessories like the safety valve, water level gauge and pressure
gauge, feed water inlet connection are installed on this drum. Drum internals includes cyclone
separators baffle plates rose pipe and the dry pipe. The main function of the steam drum is to
provide water storage and space to separate steam from water.

Mud or Water Drum

Mud or water drum the lower drum is directly attached to upper steam drum with large no
of straight tubes bundles called boiler bank tubes. Solids and mud can settle in this mud drum for
removal through periodic blowdown. Some times desuperheater coil also installed in this drum to
recover heat from superheated steam. Draining arrangement of this drum is through one or two
boiler blowdown connections to control tds or to fully drain the boiler when out of service.

Water walls

Tubing arrangement around the furnace to extract heat from fuel to generate steam is
called water wall circuit. These water walls can be arranged in line arrangement or stagger
arrangement. Water walls get the heat from radiation and approximately absorb the 50% of the
total heat produced in the furnace.
Super heater

If the temperature of the steam is above its saturation temperature, then it is called
superheated steam. The super heater (heat exchanger) is used to increase the temperature of the
steam. These are bundles of high strength tube which can bear temperature 600C Depending
upon the material of tubes Mostly SA-213 is used. In most industrial water tube boilers, the
superheater is placed where flue gases make their turn from the radiant to the convection section
of the boiler. There are three types of super heaters convection, radiant and conv-radient super
heaters.

Economizer

Economizer (heat exchanger) is the boiler accessory used to recover the heat of flue gas
that leaving the boiler by heating feed water. The efficiency of a boiler can be increased with an
economizer. 60C rise in feed water temperature with the help of economizer can save up to 1%
of fuel. Typically, economizer is used before the air heater in flue gas path of at the boiler to
increase the boiler efficiency.

Air Heater

Air supplied to a boiler for combustion is pre heated with the help of air heater by
recovering the heat of waste flue gas that leaves the economizer. 20C rise in temperature of
combustion air can save up to 1% of total fuel. Preheated air is also required for the operation of
pulverized coal furnaces. Primary air is needed for drying coal in the pulverizer.

Air heaters are classified into two main types recuperative Air heaters and regenerative Air
heaters.

Boiler Fans

For combustion of fuel in the boiler furnace air is drawn from the atmosphere and pushed
through the ducts with forced draught fan to furnace where air reacts with fuel and become flue
gas, the flue gas is then extracted from the furnace with the help of Induced draught fan. The fan
used in large water tube boilers are FD fans, ID fans, Primary air fans, Secondary air fans and
Gas recirculation fans.
Other main water tube boiler parts are burning equipment burners and furnace and gas cleaning
devices like ESP Cyclone Separators and bag filters.

Applications of Water-tube boiler

“The ability of watertube boilers to generate superheated steam makes these boilers particularly
attractive in applications that require dry, high-pressure, high-energy steam, including steam
turbine power generation”.

Stationary

Modern boilers for power generation are almost entirely water-tube designs, owing to
their ability to operate at higher pressures. Where process steam is required for heating or as a
chemical component, then there is still a small niche for fire-tube boilers.

Marine

Their ability to work at higher pressures has led to marine boilers being almost entirely
water-tube. This change began around 1900, and traced the adoption of turbines for propulsion
rather than reciprocating (i.e. piston) engines – although watertube boilers were also used with
reciprocating engines.

Railway

There has been no significant adoption of water-tube boilers for railway locomotives. A
handful of experimental designs were produced, but none of these were successful or led to their
widespread use. Most water-tube railway locomotives, especially in Europe, used the Schmidt
system. Most were compounds, and a few uniflows. The Norfolk and Western Railway's Jawn
Henry was an exception, as it used a steam turbine combined with an electric transmission.

Hybrids

A slightly more successful adoption was the use of hybrid water-tube / fire-tube systems.
As the hottest part of a locomotive boiler is the firebox, it was an effective design to use a water-
tube design here and a conventional fire-tube boiler as an economizer (i.e. pre-heater) in the
usual position.
 One famous example of this was the USA Baldwin 4-10-2 No. 60000, built in 1926.
Operating as a compound at a boiler pressure of 2,400 kilopascals (350 psi) it covered over
160,000 kilometers (100,000 mi) successfully. After a year though, it became clear that any
economies were overwhelmed by the extra costs and it was retired to become a stationary plant.
A series of twelve experimental locomotives were constructed at the Baltimore and Ohio
Railroad's Mt. Clare shops under the supervision of George H. Emerson, but none of them was
replicated in any numbers.

Brotan boiler

The only railway use of water-tube boilers in any numbers was the Brotan boiler,
invented in Austria in 1902 by Johann Brotan and found in rare examples throughout Europe.
Hungary, though, was a keen user and had around 1,000 of them. Like the Baldwin, this
combined a water-tube firebox with a fire-tube barrel. The original characteristic of the Brotan
was a long steam drum running above the main barrel, making it resemble a Flaman boiler in
appearance.

Road

While the traction engine was usually built using its locomotive boiler as its frame, other
types of steam road vehicles such as lorries and cars have used a wide range of different boiler
types. Road transport pioneers Goldsworthy Gurney and Walter Hancock both used water-tube
boilers in their steam carriages around 1830.

Most under type wagons used water-tube boilers. Many manufacturers used variants of
the vertical cross-tube boiler, including Atkinson, Clayton, Garrett and Sentinel. Other types
include the Clarkson 'thimble tube' and the Foden O-type wagon's pistol-shaped boiler.

Steam fire-engine makers such as Merryweather usually used water-tube boilers for their
rapid steam-raising capacity.

Many steam cars used water-tube boilers, and the Bolsover Express company even made
a water-tube replacement for the Stanley Steamer fire-tube boiler.
 UNIVERSITY OF PERPETURAL HELP SYSTEM LAGUNA

COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING, ARCHITECTURE AND AVIATION

Water-Tube Boiler

Basbas, Aeron Bien B.

E4M – BSME

Engr. Jimmy Teodoro