Why Pressure Reducing Valves (PVR's) are costing you money

Abstract

Throughout many manufacturing facilities, colleges, commercial sites or industrial complexes, pressure reducing valves (PRV's) provide a cheap, reliable method to produce low pressure steam from a high pressure source in order to meet a process requirement or heating load. This simple method of expanding steam in a PRV creates no work and supplies the same heat content available in the high pressure steam at a more manageable low pressure. What if you could produce the same low pressure steam while saving hundreds of thousands of dollars on your electric bill and taking only a minimal hit in the available heat content? Why let steam down and get no benefit from it, when putting it through a low pressure steam turbine coupled to a generator would produce the heat you need for process with the byproduct of onsite electrical generation. This paper analyzes the costs, concerns and benefits of replacing a pressure reducing valve with a Steam Turbine Generator set including illustrations of what the marginal fuel increase would be in order to take advantage of the added benefits of clean, cheap and reliable onsite power production.