Chemical sites buy heat in several forms at once: high-pressure steam for conversion and evaporation, thermal oil for resin and polymer duty above the steam range, superheated water for closed technological loops, and hot water or air for buildings. What matters is not peak output but holding those parameters, day after day, on media that are dusty, hot or corrosive.
What chemical processes ask of a boiler house
Chemical production runs in long campaigns, and heat belongs to the process line rather than to the utilities. Conversion, evaporation, distillation, jacketed vessels and finish drying often draw on one source, so a trip on the heat side stops more than the boiler house.
The parameter window matters as much as output. Resin cooking, polymerisation and the drying of sensitive solids tolerate only a few degrees of drift, so carrier temperature has to stay flat while firing rate moves. Gas released at 850–1000°C, as in pyrite roasting, has to become steam safely rather than be cooled to waste.
- Continuous duty
- Round-the-clock operation with hot standby, so maintenance never stops the process.
- Stable parameters
- Temperature and pressure held across the whole load range, not only at design point.
- Aggressive media
- Dust, sulphur and alkali dictate duct layout, wall temperatures and cleaning systems.
- Safety chains
- Duplicated instruments and burner interlocks that act before alarm settings are met.
- Heat recovery
- Exothermic stages and hot off-gas returned to the process as steam.
Equipment for chemical duty
The series follows the carrier your process needs. Most sites run two or three circuits: a high-temperature oil loop for the technology, a steam header for process duty, and hot water or air for buildings.
Thermal oil circuits
MAGMA covers oil duty to 10 MW at up to 300°C, and CRUX gives a vertical layout to 10 MW where floor area is short. Neither puts the circuit under pressure, which removes the main hazard of high-temperature steam near solvents, resins and propellant masses. EXPAND and STORE size expansion and drain volume.
Steam and superheated water
TOR and TRIPASS carry process steam to 0.7 and 15 bar, HERO covers high pressure in compact form, and RAPID or PILLAR start quickly for intermittent consumers. PULSE gives saturated steam to 180°C, MIRA X covers trains from 25 to 220 t/h, and QUANT, QUANTUM and EON supply superheated water to 180°C.
Recovery and site heat
PHOENIX and ECHO take gas at up to 600°C after turbines and process furnaces and return it as steam or hot water. CORE, SLIM, CORE DUO, TRINITY, BASE and MEGA serve heating and utilities, ROOK and WARD place the plant outdoors, and ZEPHYR, KENO, LUMO and ROCK heat shaft air, spray booths and dryers.
Carriers, outputs and operating limits
The figures are platform limits of the series. Your working point comes from the heat balance, set with margin against the process peak.
- Steam
- 0.6–154 MW, up to 45 bar, saturated or superheated to 450°C, up to 220 t/h.
- Hot water
- Up to 50 MW and 16 bar, flow temperature to 115°C, for heating and utilities.
- Superheated water
- Up to 20 MW and 15 bar at 180°C, or 209 MW in the MEGA X shaft design.
- Thermal oil
- Up to 10 MW with carrier to 300°C and no pressure in the circuit.
- Hot air
- Up to 1500 kW, direct or indirect, for dryers, shaft air and workshop heating.
- Waste heat
- Up to 30 MW from gas at up to 600°C, as steam to 25 bar or as hot water.
What keeps the plant in service
Service life is decided by fluid quality. Feed water is deaerated in DEGAS and returned through BUFFER, continuous blowdown passes DRY, and dosing follows a full water analysis. Wall temperatures are calculated so that condensation stays out of the tail surfaces, the usual cause of low-temperature corrosion.
Thermal oil ages as film temperature rises, so surfaces are sized for high oil velocity and burners tuned against local overheating. CONTROL panels run burner, feed and safety chains and link to Digital Twin telemetry, which flags drift in efficiency or water quality early. BOOST and ECO recover the last flue gas heat.
How we work through a project
We start from your process data. The first stage produces a heat balance you can defend internally, with fuel, carrier and redundancy agreed before anything is drawn.
- Input data
- Process loads and their daily profile, carrier parameters, fuels on site, water analysis and space.
- Selection
- Series, output, redundancy and recovery options compared on capital and running cost.
- Design and manufacture
- Drawings, control philosophy and documentation to EN 12952 or EN 12953 and PED 2014/68/EU.
- Works testing
- Hydraulic tests, control loop checks and functional trials under ISO 9001 before dispatch.
- Commissioning
- Burner tuning across the load range, safety chain proving, operator training and a service plan.