A New Jersey paper mill came to Preferred Utilities recently needing a quote for a new burner for their 1961 Preferred Utilities Unit Steam Generator. What is wrong with their existing Preferred burner? Nothing. The plant is being forced to convert from No. 6 heavy fuel oil to natural gas. Will their next burner last 56+ years? Maybe. […]
Lessons from an Oil Spill
Last summer a facility in Texas spilled 3,500 gallons of diesel fuel intended for one of their emergency generators. The fuel was pushed up through a day tank vent, ran across their parking lot, and into a pond adjacent to their property. The clean-up team recovered about 2,100 gallons of fuel out of the pond, but at a […]
Keeping the Data Flowing
What happened the last time your house lost power? That email you were writing might have had to wait an extra half an hour, and your refrigerator might have warmed a few degrees. At most, ordinary power outages represent a minor annoyance to the home or office. The situation is different at the massive data centers of the […]
Liquid Wood: The Renewable, Carbon-Neutral Fuel Alternative That Is Finally Ready to Burn
Discussions of sustainable energy don’t often include food flavorings. However, the same process that creates liquid smoke—the stuff you can buy at the grocery store to add a smoky flavor to just about anything—can produce liquid wood, a very environmentally friendly fuel. You may not have heard of liquid wood because, until very recently, it was quite difficult […]
Combustion Theory – Efficiency
Understanding Combustion Efficiency The efficiency of a burner-boiler combination is simply the amount of useful energy leaving the system expressed as a percentage of the chemical energy in the fuel entering the system. Why should I care about efficiency? Accounting for the loss of useful energy is an important step in evaluating overall cost. For instance, a change in […]
Combustion Theory: Variables
Accounting for variations in oxygen and fuel For any burner-boiler combination, there is an ideal “minimum excess air” level for each firing rate over the turn-down range. Usually, burners require much higher levels of excess air when operating near their minimum firing rates than they do at “high fire.” More serious factors than dirty fan wheels and dampers […]
Preferred Utilities Performs Energy Retrofit on Pharmaceutical Boiler in Puerto Rico
In conjunction with Puerto Rico representative M.R. Franceschini Inc., Preferred recently replaced an existing flame safeguard and oxygen trim system with the Preferred BurnerMate Universal (BMU) system on a 500 HP boiler at a pharmaceutical plant outside of San Juan. In addition to oxygen trim, the BMU is controlling the forced draft fan variable speed drive (VSD), and […]
Combustion Theory: The Basics
Introduction Welcome to the Combustion blog series by Preferred Utilities Manufacturing Corporation. To read the introductory post, click here. This series was inspired by Local Law 87, an environmental regulation passed by New York City legislators. LL87 seeks to reduce the city’s emissions by 50% while increasing the overall efficiency of large residential buildings (over 50,000 gross sq. […]
Understanding Local Law 87 – and laws like it
The New Paradigm What does Local Law 87 – and laws like it – mean for you? With increasing regulatory effort to protect the environment, preserve energy, and reduce carbon emissions, states and cities have taken matters into their own hands by way of local legislation. New York City’s Local Law 87 (LL87) mandates that buildings over 50,000 gross square feet undergo periodic […]
What is SCADA?
SCADA stands for Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition system. It is a type of industrial control system (ICS), which is basically a computer system designed to monitor industrial processes in the real world. But unlike other industrial control systems, SCADA systems can compute multiple sets of data over long distances. The primary benefit of a SCADA system is the ability to see a visual representation of […]