Stainless steel boilers

Not exactly a beginners thread but as I have no information I thought it apt.

In my professional life we manufacture production line machines, mostly from stainless steel where foods are concerned. So this makes me luck at having an endless supply of Stainless steel. By chance I was looking at the Maxitrack website and found that they offer stainless steel boilers. This comes as news to me and was wondering if there are any plans available for a bench test boiler or any boilers for that matter?

We have a few welders who are very capable of welding pipes (tig– purged) for our machines, as is required for hygiene, so I am sure one of them will be able to weld me a boiler.

How would a club boiler inspector feel about one of these?

Your thoughts and experiences please gents.

Brian

Club inspectors can't inspect stainless as its not covered by the club testing code, see item 3.5

I feel this is one of the reasoins that Stainless is not used much in this counrty, go over to Europe and stainless is quite common, that may be the best place to look for designs.

J

Edit, I remember this came upo before, if you look closely at the wording on Maxitrak it says copper and MS boilers but Stainless vestles not boilers, or something like that. Although Marco who does their boilers is quite capable of stainless work as part of their main fabrication company Welding Innovations Ltd.

"In addition to the list below, we can build any boiler to your requirements, Water Container's in Stainless or other materials.  Also, we can build boilers in other materials such as carbon steel."

Edited By JasonB on 01/04/2012 09:03:06

I know very little about boilers but may I draw this Australian/New Zealand specification to your attention

Come and live in FRANCE. There has never been an instance of a stainless steel model boiler failing and they are quite popular. However I have to say that the testing regulations are VERY different to the UK - that said I havn't heard of a model boiler accident be it copper, mild or stainless steel.

In a previous life in the 70's I worked in the nuclear power industry and can say that stainless boilers, albeit of a very different type, were the norm in an environment where steam temperatures and pressures are very high, failure would be catastrophic, a long life is essential and repairs extremely difficult. Mind you the boiler shells were a good inch thick and encased in reinforced concrete several feet thick!

Ian.

To add to what Ian said: stainless steel is also used extensively in medical autoclaves - here the temperatures and pressures required aren't anything like as high as in a power station but large changes in temperature and high temperature gradients are very frequent. Stainless steel seems to cope with this fine - biggest clinical autoclave I've seen had a 4 cubic meter capacity with a steam supply from an oil fired steam plant and it ran for decades.

I suspect that in the past stainless steel was avoided because of limitations in welding technology in smaller workshops - modern TIG technology has changed things a lot.