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Rangoras t1_j5yxvzt wrote

Reply to comment by [deleted] in How hot is the steam coming out of nuclear power plants? by ivy-claw

Sea water needs to be desalinated before being used in a boiler. If you only just filtered it for solids the salts in the water would form a nasty layer of scale on the water side of the boiler tubes quickly resulting in poor heat transfer and failure of the boiler tubes. When we make our boiler water on my ships we only use water where salinity is under 5 PPM

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crujones43 t1_j606k33 wrote

Even the highly filtered lake water has enough particulate to build up calcium and sludge inside the boilers after only 2 or so years. I have been on a few water lancing jobs where we install and operate remote tooling to reach between the hundreds of boiler tubes and use a 9000psi water jet to break all the sludge and calcium up.

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