News

Building up steam

How UMaine keeps students toasty

Posted on Oct. 06, 2008, at 12:00 a.m.

Few people visit the steam plant, but the workers there know if nobody worries about it, they’re doing their jobs correctly. They know it’s best if the only thought given to how the buildings on campus are heated occurs after seeing steam leak from a manhole. Even so, they appreciate a visit now and then, such as when art students stop by to paint the brightly colored, geometrically patterned pipes that fill the building.

Since 1910, the University of Maine steam plant has been operating non-stop to keep heat flowing to buildings on campus. The steam plant operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Shutting down the plant would mean not only the loss of heat to almost all the buildings on campus, but also damage to the machines. There are 11 full-time employees who keep an eye on temperatures and pressures every second of every day.

The exact workings of the steam plant are complex, consisting of five boilers in the plant and approximately 8 miles of pipe throughout the campus. The plant acts as a circular, self-servicing entity, relying on itself to ensure smooth operation. For example, the water is heated before it enters the furnaces, almost to boiling point, by steam from the same furnaces.

The water is, of course, a central part of the entire process – without water flowing through its tubes, the furnaces would melt in minutes. The water is purchased from the city and further treated to soften it and remove as many impurities as possible. While the water from the city is clean enough to drink, with the amount of water the steam plant uses a day – more than 200,000 gallons – the otherwise harmless impurities can build inside the furnaces and pipes. When the oil furnaces are in use the steam is also used to heat up the thick, almost tar-like oil used in those furnaces.

When the water enters the furnace, it is circulated in pipes and heated by a fire at approximately 1,200 to 1,500 F. The steam is pumped at high pressure to each building on campus through the network of pipes, and the heat is radiated into the air. Once the steam condenses back into water, it is piped back to the steam plant, where it is reused.

About 85 percent of the steam makes it back as water; the rest is lost because of leakage. A worker explained that recycled water is “the best kind of water” because it is in its purest state and does not need to go through the chemical purification process again.

How the campus was heated prior to the steam plant is not exactly known, but the steam plant’s superintendent, Chuck Spalding, said the individual buildings were probably heated with wood stoves or furnaces.

In 1910, the steam plant was constructed to serve as a centralized source for heat. The plant originally burned coal, but in 1946 the plant installed two oil furnaces that remain in place today. Two larger oil furnaces and a furnace equipped to burn both natural gas and oil are used today, with the gas-burning furnace doing most of the work.

When they do use the oil-burning furnace, it burns as many as 14,500 gallons of no. 6 oil per day in January.

Besides being cheaper to operate, the gas-powered furnace also has the added bonus of producing less emissions than the oil-powered furnaces, Spalding said. Therefore, the natural gas powered furnace operates most of the year, with one of the oil furnaces used in the winter months as needed.

The employees of the steam plant work hard for little recognition. They are in charge of millions of dollars worth of equipment and are a crucial gear in the workings of the school. It gets toasty in the steam plant, but they keep on working.

Campus Currents: Steam Plant