Replacement of Steam Boilers

[Building & Engineering Products & Services] Project Melissa is Public Sector Decarbonisation funded scheme to decarbonise the steam supply at the MHRA South Mimms Campus site. The existing steam system holds 3No (three) 3,900kg/h gas fired steam boilers in the existing boiler plant, and these will be removed and replaced with two 3,000kg/h electric steam boilers as part of this work to decarbonise the site.

The existing steam system is critical and operates all year-round and is used for site activities which include space heating, domestic hot water, laboratory process loads including autoclaves, freeze dryers and laboratory humidification. Therefore, it is imperative that any downtime of the steam must be kept to a minimum to minimise disruption to site operations.

As part of this project, technical specialists are onboard and have assessed the site steam demand and have calculated the peak steam demand for the site @ 4,400kg/h, the new electrical steam boilers have been sized to meet two thirds of the site approx. each (3,000kg/h), should in which case that one boiler was to go down for maintenance or failed to operate, that the remaining boiler would be sufficient to deliver majority of the site demand. During normal operation, the output of each individual boiler shall be limited to 50% of the site demand to prevent the site electrical demand exceeding the upgraded supply capacity.

As above, it should be noted that due to the requirements of the two new electric boilers, that the site needs additional power supply and have secured an increase in supply from the site’s local Distribution Network Operator, UK Power Networks (UKPN) and this work will be key to operating the electric boilers once installed to site. The existing supply to site is 1730KVA and has been agreed to be increased to 6MVA to manage the existing site operations and to serve the two new electric boilers