Steam Traps - engineer vs maintenance
I work at an old plant and we have a massive steam blow-by issue with on a bunch of traps. Most of our lines are only producing 10-15 lbs/hr of condensate with little-to-no delta P. Our current traps are (mostly failed) Armstrong 2011C Inverted bucket traps that the spec sheet shows are much too large for our application.
I’m just a maintenance guy, I only know about steam trap sizing due to Google, ChatGPT and YouTube. Our engineer wants to replace each steam trap like-for-like, but I think we’re gonna run right back into the same problem. He’s been here for 30 years so he swings a lot of weight. Anybody knowledgeable have input on this?
Our steam lines are mostly a constant 50psi, 1”, 30-50’, insulated, and are at the end of a branch. They’re more of a drip leg at the end of a branch, heat exchangers are isolated and have their own steam traps.