Knocking away at the mill
29 Mar 2000
There was no chance for workers at Scottish woollen textile company Johnstons to enjoy a quiet working environment with the waterhammer problem caused by the unreliable heating and humidification. Fortunately peace was easy to restore by fitting Spirax Sarco APT14 automatic pump traps to air heater batteries used by the mill to supply hot air for space heating and humidification.
In normal use, the APT14 operates as a steam trap, passing condensate freely into a condensate return system as before. But now when demand is low, rather than discharging the condensate as intermittent plugs, the APT14 acts as a pump and prevents the condensate collecting. Hence no more noise.
