Trap Failure & Maintenance

Steam traps are wearing parts. Their internals cycle millions of times in dirty, hot, erosive service, and industry experience is blunt about the consequence: on a system without a survey programme, expect 10 to 20% of traps to have failed at any moment. Each failure costs money in one of two directions, and the expensive direction is invisible without instruments. Trap management is therefore not a maintenance nicety; on most steam systems it is one of the top three energy line items, and this lesson covers the failure modes, the detection methods and the economics.