Calorifiers and Hot Water Systems

using calorifier will lower your boiler capacity because it has a storage capacity of handling peak demand load.

The first thing that came to mind concerning information provided; is a Calorifer seems a different name for a Heat Exchanger. If so, preventing heating (primary loop) catamination of hospital hot water supply (secondary loop.

hi pae,

There are several reasons why the 'calorifier' aka heat exchanger is used to provide the domestic hot water service(DHWS) instead of a direct contact heater.

Firstly you will appreciate that hospital services are designed to codes of practice (HTMs in the UK)which specify how you do things and frequently impose restrictions which are somewhat opaque in rationale. Nevertheless, in this case the purpose is to provide separation between the two water systems; the low pressure hot water (LPHW)on the primary side and the DHWS in the body of the calorifier. These calorifiers can contain many hundreds of gallons of hot water and therefore provide a useful store of energy to deal with heavy demands which can arise during the day.

The separation also keeps the oxygenated DHW water away from the steel pipes, radiators etc used predominantly throughout the LPHW system. The LPHW system will also have inhibitors used to limit any corrosive influences anyway so keeping the systems completely separate is essential.

There are variations on this theme with low water content hot water generators eg "angelerys" giving rapid production with minimal storage; but these then create high loads for the primary system to handle.

If you go to direct hot water generators ie "Andrews" gas fired units then you will find that you will need to have a large number hooked up to provide the capacity needed plus a plantroom with gas available and access to the atmosphere for fluing and combustion air.

Having been involved in health care services for many years I've come to apprciate the merits of simple low maintenance kit because reliability is one of the key issues.

The days of steam heating in hospitals are ending;although there are plenty of examples still around,other systems are in use including medium and high temperature hot water. If you are interested in building services as a career then there are plenty of examples of more efficient ways of heating water to be found.

Good luck and enjoy your engineering.

calorifier is used to improve the efficiency of plant as for hot water supply to the boiler calorifier used to maintain the temperature at 60 to 75 , as the water from in the boiler is not in the steam state we have to know for what purpose they are using it