Hospitals

A majority of hospitals have their own set of boilers to supply steam for steralization building heat, and for their hot water supply.

These boilers are housed in a building, often refered to as a powerhouse, that is usually adjacent to the main hospital.The powerhouse is often concealed away from public view but can be found since the smoke stack gives the location away.

However, some plants are really well hidden. Vancouver General Hospital has its powerhouse located underground with the stacks disguised as urban art in a park beside the hospital (as seen in the image to the right).

Schools

Large universities have their own steam or hot water plants to heat buildings on campus.

The University of British Columbia has their own steam plant with four medium-sized boilers. BCIT has two medium-sized hot water boilers.

A medium-sized boiler can be the size of a small house as shown below. This design is similar to two of the boilers at UBC.

Image from: http://www.babcock.com/products/boilers/images/fm.gif

Research Facilities

Some research facilities require steam for testing purposes. An example is a medical research facility.

Medical research facilities are similar to hospitals but may only require a small amout of steam and thus have small boilers. Physics and materials research labs may have small to medium sized boilers depending on the required process.

Food Processing

Food processing plants require steam to cook food, steralize quipment and even for refrigeration (look up "absorption refrigeration" on Google if you want to see how that works).

Power Generation

The late 19th Century saw major advancements in electrical distribution and the rise of the generating plants. The people running these early electrical plants were considered power engineers.

Fast forward to today and you will still find power engineers responsible for the operation of large power generation plants. In B.C., one notable plant owned by BC Hydro is Burrard Thermal.

Burrard Thermal houses six large steam turbo generators, each with its own dedicated boiler the size of an appartment building. The plant is on standby for most of the year and is used for power factor correction for the BC power grid.

Chemical Recovery

British Columbia's pulp and paper industry requires steam to create paper products. The processes also uses valuable chemicals which cannot be wasted. This is where special chemical recovery boilers are used.

After use, the chemicals used in the pulp making process are still usable but are contaminated with wood fibre. These chemicals are pumped into a recovery boiler which burns off the wood fibre leaving the chemicals to trickle out the bottom. This is a simplified explanation of the process; evaporation and re-causticizing are part of the process as well.