[Shipmare]

Brands of boilers i’ve experience are Hada Tortise, Sunflame boiler. Both rotary cup type and pressure fuel jet type.

Prior to port, make sure your boiler can be fired, else you’re gonna be in trouble.

Simple maintenance to be carried out, Make sure that the electrodes are clean, Nozzle is clear, Swirl plates are not choked.

Commonly problems for boilers misfiring
1) Firstly always troubleshoot to see if there is arc from the electrode. ( even a small wrongly adjusted gap can cause the arhing to fail) this can be achieved by putting the boiler on manual mode, observing through the peephole, then you push the button for ignition.
2) If there is no arking seen, remove your burner and adjust your electrode slightly.
3) If arking is seen and boiler misfire, problems could be from the fuel line. Check your Fuel Oil filters, fuel pump attach on burner.

Another problem, Black smoke seen on the funnel when boiler starting/ burning.
1) There is a Problem in Fuel / Air mix ratio. Different boiler have difference way of adjusting the Air Damper, some simple, some a little more complicated.
2) The air damper will only open slightly when boiler is starting, Once the sequence for solenoid for oil main burner opens, the air damper automatic opens to position.
3) Sometime the air damper opens too much at start thus boiler misfire.
4) Black smoke arise when the air damper opens too little when boiler is burning, adjust slowly to open more and observe the color of the flame, and also smoke from the funnel.

[Moonraker]

Adding on above from Mare, During maintenance Make sure flame eyes are clean also.

Ships now should be burning Do and not HFO for boiler now that IMO2020 kicks in, chances for misfiring should be lower.

Always, always Make sure boilers are properly purged everytime you fire manually, sometimes there would be backfire, its dangerous.

Not my experience, but there are instances i heard whereby boiler tubes are badly choked that backpressure causes boiler flame to diminish.

[Author]

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