ELECTRICAL HEAT TRACE VS STEAM TRACING

With energy costs rising, it is critical for plants to run more efficiently, and although steam tracing has historically been the common form of heat tracing, electrical heat tracing offers more benefits including saving your facility money and resources, and more importantly getting you the heat trace visibility you need to prevent pipe bursts.   

When assessing the various heat tracing solutions, it involves multiple factors including cost, effectiveness and the environment. As previously mentioned, even though steam tracing has been a popular choice for facilities historically, advances in technology have allowed facilities to run more efficiently using electrical heat tracing technology. 

When it comes to electrical heat trace, EHT Group are the experts and with our SmartTrace Monitoring and Management tools that keep your facility running optimally and the benefits strongly outweigh that of steam tracing practices.  

What is Steam Tracing? 

Steam tracing is designed to prevent heat loss within a facility, by circulating steam around process pipes to heat them. Steam tracing is commonly practiced within the oil & gas industry where the plumbing is retrofitted with steam tracing equipment that allows manufacturers to to control the temperatures of the pipes within the facility to avoid plan upsets.  

Disadvantages of Steam Tracing 

Although designed to prevent heat loss, steam tracing requires a great deal of labour to install and implement within a facility, and steam tracing is often less effective when used in longer distance. Steam tracing requires frequent maintenance checks over electrical heat tracing, putting more stress on staff, mismanagement of priorities and if course costs more money. With such pressure being put on teams and resources, steam tracing leaves more risk for errors including pipe bursts and plant upsets.  

The solution, electrical heat tracing.  

What is Electrical Heat Tracing? 

Electrical heat tracing allows facilities to protect their plants from pipe freezes and upsets while also offering greater visibility of the facilities heat trace. With EHT Groups, SmartTrace Monitoring and Management solutions, you can monitor and control your heat trace while validating alarms, manage lock out circuits, circuits that are forced on and problem circuits all with easy to read metrics.  

The Advantages of Electrical Heat Tracing 

Electrical heat tracing is a safer heat tracing option, as it keeps your facility running optimally while avoiding exposing staff to burns and exposed circuits, all while saving your facility money as electrical heat tracing prevents serious upsets and facility shutdowns. SmartTrace allows you to get real time monitoring from anywhere, and on any device. SmartTrace allows you to access more than heat trace status, it keeps your facility’s heat trace health in check all year round. It is simple and easy to integrate into your existing heat trace panels to grant you the heat trace visibility you need.  

Although steam tracing has historically been the heat trace method of choice, it limits the amount of control that facilities have in managing their heat trace infrastructure, and still leaves facilities at risk of upsets, including pipe bursts. Electrical heat tracing, allows you to effectively manage your heat trace preventing freeze ups and pipe bursts with accuracy.  

With EHT Group, and our SmartTrace solutions, you can get the visibility you need, from anywhere at any time, freeing up more resources, saving money and more importantly protecting your facility. Connect with us to learn more about SmartTrace Solutions.