In 2010, the University of Massachusetts Lowell reaped the benefits of their Cleaver-Brooks equipment upgrade on their North Campus Power Plant. The first phase was to upgrade their Bigelow 34,000 PPH IWT boiler with a natural gas-fired burner to reap the rewards of a National Grid rebate. The job was unusually tricky because they also wanted to retain their ability to burn both #6 oil and burn #2 oil in the future. The unique design challenges to keep oil options and make natural gas the primary fuel were met by the Cleaver-Brooks design team!
Custom Engineered Burner
The ProFire Division of Cleaver-Brooks was able to design a burner to meet their specification and supplied a ProFire NTXLEG-378A 30 PPM burner. The burner incorporated technology from their Natcom division for the oil nozzle and delivery to the burner head. It was combined with a Hawk Ultra 100 control and featured Parallel Positioning, O2 trim and a VFD for the 60 HP blower motor. So the customer was able to upgrade and reduce emissions all in one unit.
Energy Saving$
The combined energy savings in the plant was $1,000,000.00 for the first year. The energy savings due to the new equipment with a metered system has been estimated at up to 8% of the total project dollar savings. In addition, National Grid the local energy utility provided an incentive to help finance the project based on the ROI of the energy-saving controls as part of the specification. The combination of all the components on the burner were also inspected and approved on-site by UL for a custom burner package.
The customer will soon proceed with Phase II which will remove two end-of-life IWT units and replace them. They have purchased Cleaver-Brooks 400 and 800 HP Firetubes with Hawk ICS Advanced Steam Package Controls. They also have a Cleaver-Brooks DA tank with the ADAC Control Package System going online at the same time.