Choosing the best Boiler water treatment chemicals.

Boiler water treatment is a must for all industrial sites who depend on Boiler systems to create steam for their industrial process. Now because these processes are usually huge, on an industrial scale if you will, the potential for something to go wrong and the potential for that to be a huge and catastrophic failure increase. Think of it this way, your boiler is a bomb that has so far managed to keep its lid on. However you are dealing with metal and water, depending on the mineral composition of that water you are going to be subject to corrosion or scale. Heavily corroded pipework can burst releasing hundreds of litres of scolding water or steam potentially over workers. Take a look at the other spectrum with scale and your looking at the choking up of pipework not only does it greatly reduce efficiency but it increases pressure and if over months and years this pressure is exceeding the operational limits of the pipework and machinery there is going to be an explosion when it does finally fail.
The question is what type of Boiler water treatment chemical do you need? A good water treatment company should perform all this for you, working out the best chemicals and servicing and maintaining your boiler water treatment in one contract service package. If you maintain your own site machinery it's good to understand what types of chemical are available for what type of treatment. Let's start off with Oxygen scavenger's, this form of boiler water treatment is a prime treatment for removing oxygen from boiler feed water, this protects the boiler and hotwell from corrosion, corrosion inhibitors are an important treatment chemical, there are several different types suitable for different pressure boiler systems. For high pressure a sodium sulphite oxygen scavenger proves ideal, for low pressure boilers you can get away with tannin. The benefits of tannin based treatments can make them a good option with their ability to form a corrosion resistant film on the boiler steel, they don't add to the total dissolved solids so reduce need for blow down and are ideal for use in protecting idle and intermittently used boilers.
A polymer sludge conditioner is a prime way to halt the build up of scale in the system, by converting precipitated hardness into a mobile sludge it is easily removed by boiler blow down, many boiler water treatment polymers are FDA approved so make sure to ask before choosing a chemical supplier if this is a requirement.
An alkalinity builder is sometimes a good method of reaching the correct boiler water chemistry to prevent either corrosion or scale, by increasing the Feedwater pH it helps to protect the hot well, feed line and flue gas economisers from acid corrosion.
Phosphate treatments can be used for low pressure boilers to fight against scale formation or in high pressure boilers as pH control agents, however when used in scale prevention they are best used in conjunction with a polymer sludge conditioner.
The use of an Amine can help to neutralise acidity and form a protective film in pipework as condensing steam will absorb oxygen and carbon dioxide and rapidly corrode condensate return lines.