Hi!I was glad I came across this site. Thanks to the developer. This will surely help me and lot more others while working in a power plant chemical laboratory. Have done a lot of start-ups, but still I would like to confirm on the optimum time of starting the saline detector pump @ the hotwell during start-up. Our practice is to start the pump during water conditioning, before boiler filling, that is so we can detect earlier of any condenser leak. However I read in some books, it is better to start the pump when there is vacuum, so that it wont give false high reading. Hope you can help me with this.
Thanks!

We start our saline pumps during water conditioning prior to filling to boiler. Make sure you properly blow down the boiler until you get better quality and remove any contaminates. Starting when there is a vacuum will allow you to monitor any losses caused by saline circulating piping. When there is no vacuum prior to starting the saline pump, you will base your loss due to a possible leak on operation history.

Actually there need to be a level in the condensate tank before starting the saline detector pump, unless you have a water circulation loop on the condensate hot well. The goal is to detect any amount of chloride above system spec. in the condensate water prior to discharging it back to feedwater system. I believe that as long as theirs a level in the hot well and the water circulator pumps are providing cooling to the condenser then the saline detection pump should be running as well.

The salt concentration will be highest during periods of low flow, i.e. during start-up. Since most systems will have a recirculating system on their condenser to keep evactors cool most of the water will be recirculated back to the condenser possibly increasing the salt concentration even more. Once a hotwell level has been established and hotwell pumps are placed in service any detection equipment should be in service. You want to be able to dump any contaminated water overboard as soon as it is detected to prevent it getting to the boiler.