Steam Transformer

a heat-exchange device used to vaporize water. It is a type of evaporator but differs from an evaporator in that the end product of its operation is steam, not a distillate (feed water). Steam converters are used to conserve the pure condensate in heat-and-electric power plants with high-pressure boilers when heat is used by devices that do not return the condensate obtained from the steam to the plant’s cycle; this happens if the condensate is either used up or polluted in the technological process. (High-pressure boilers require very pure feed water.) Live steam or steam withdrawn from turbines (primary steam) vaporizes the water fed into a steam converter and generates secondary steam at a lower pressure. The secondary steam is then supplied to steam-operated devices, but the pure condensate from the heating primary steam remains without loss in the cycle of the steam electric power plant. Thus, a steam converter is essentially a steam-steam boiler with a possible evaporative capacity of 75 to 100 tons per hour.