As we approach the frigid winter months and temperatures begin to fall, industrial plants are preparing for their annual pipeline freeze protection procedures to protect their water-bearing systems from freezing.
What Happens If Pipelines Freeze?
Water-bearing piping must be appropriately winterized before temperatures drop to keep temperature-sensitive processes and equipment functioning optimally throughout the freeze season.
Without a pipeline freeze protection solution, piping can rapidly freeze when exposed to frigid temperatures leading to interrupted systems, burst piping, and inevitably lengthy and costly repairs.
What’s The Solution
To prevent freeze damage, many industrial facilities repurpose an existing steam supply to heat trace their piping.
While an effective freeze-deterrent, conventional steam tracing systems often feature a manual control method which can quickly accumulate hefty costs. Traditionally, plant maintenance personnel would turn the steam supply on at the beginning of the freeze season, and only turn it off once warmer, Spring weather arrived. Although this does effectively prevent freezing, the unregulated steam supply does not account for periods of time when the temperature is above freezing resulting in wasted steam and bloated operation costs.
To both conserve steam and significantly reduce tracing expenses, ThermOmegaTech® offers several thermostatic steam tracing solutions that automatically control the flow of media through traced lines by sensing ambient or surface temperatures and turning off to conserve steam when temperatures are above freezing.
Ultimate Steam Tracing Solutions
Accurate and reliable, our thermostatic, self-actuating steam control valves automatically regulate a heat tracing’s steam supply according to variations in ambient or surface temperature – turning steam on when below freezing, and turning it off when above. Innovatively designed to both prevent freezing and reduce the costs associated with manually controlled systems, you can trust ThermOmegaTech’s® steam control valves to keep your facility freeze-free all winter!
We offer several thermostatic steam control valves to satisfy a variety of system designs and needs:
TV/SCA – Ambient Sensing
Used to regulate steam, air, gas or liquid flows in response to ambient temperature changes to protect lines from freezing.
US/S-X & TV/US-X – Surface or Fluid Sensing
Regulates the flow of heating media in response to the process temperature or the pipe’s surface temperature.
HAT & TV/HAT
Acting as steam traps, these valves eliminate live steam loss by discharging condensate well below the steam temperature.
