Increasing Steam Boiler Capacity at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital

With Kroeschell’s long history of successfully servicing Lutheran General’s cooling equipment, Advocate requested that our Combustion Systems Group perform a full evaluation on the four boilers. Kroeschell factory trained and certified burner technicians performed comprehensive testing of the burner controls and combustion management system. A detailed report was presented to Advocate, and they approved Kroeschell’s recommendations. A two-phase approach was implemented.

In phase one, Kroeschell repaired and reprogrammed the proprietary OEM combustion controls to proper operation on all four boilers. This resulted in the immediate resolve of sooting and poor combustion. Boilers responded with clean and efficient combustion, with stack emissions near zero CO and NOx levels below 60 ppm. During this process, Kroeschell found several OEM items—draft controls, O2 trim, VFD Blower control—not responding properly to OEM controls. Kroeschell addressed this during phase two.

In phase two, Kroeschell learned that the original proprietary OEM combustion controls would soon become obsolete, prompting Kroeschell to find an alternative nonproprietary system. Kroeschell selected, installed and commissioned a Siemens LMV52 Series Burner Combustion Management System. The LMV Series is both forward and backward compatible and able to interface with the Hospital’s BAS. The LMV Series retrofit controls allowed the draft controls, O2 trim and VFD combustion blower to all work in unison providing maximum boiler efficiencies.