Jason Bell, Miura America’s regional manager for the Southeast division, recalled an urgent boiler request from a customer.

“We received a call from a popular soft drink manufacturer in Southern Florida.” recalls Bell. “They were having major issues with a boiler they had purchased from another company. Since we had already replaced another boiler from that company with a new one from Miura, we weren’t surprised that they would be calling us.”

But this request was different. The company had waited too long to change out their old, inefficient, problematic boiler, and needed a new one fast. Typically, that might mean looking into a rental boiler, which could usually be delivered and installed in a week or two, but the company was hoping to avoid that and reached out to Miura to see what could be done.

“The customer was trying to find out if there was any way to get a new boiler delivered and installed in much less time than the industry-standard of a few months,” said Bell. “They were really in a bind, since their current boiler was scaling up badly, and causing them all sorts of issues.”

Scaling up is a term that describes what happens when hardness in the water basically turns to hard calcium or scale, and then slowly destroys the inside of a boiler.

“They were getting all sorts of alarms, and while they could keep running the boiler to meet production demands, the fuel costs were becoming unmanageable because the boiler had become totally inefficient,” stated Bell. “They needed a new boiler fast and they figured they would just give us a call before biting the bullet on a costly rental unit.”

What the customer didn’t know was that Miura had recently launched its Quick-Ship Xpress (QSX) boiler program, and could deliver and install a new unit in a week or two.

 “Now customers can have a new ‘zero to full steam in five minutes’ Miura boiler, from 50 to 600 hp, in the time it usually takes to install a rental unit,” said Paul O’Donnell, Miura’s VP of support operations. 

The program allowed the soft drink manufacturer to save money on rental and connection costs — money that could go towards a more permanent solution. 

“It took a moment for the plant manager to realize that we could meet his expectations and have a new Miura boiler shipped and installed in the time it normally takes for a rental,” added Bell. “When he asked if there was any chance we could make this happen and I told him about our new Quick-Ship program, his big smile said it all.”

In addition to eliminating much of the need for rental unit costs, Miura officials said its program also makes it easier for buyers to “move on” from old inefficient boilers that may have seemed preferable to any total downtime for replacement. And there was another benefit: since the soft drink company was so happy that they could free themselves of their aging boiler without any real downtime, they decided to move ahead with another plan to step up production.

“They took this opportunity to couple two ideas into one,” recalls Bell. “They replaced the scaled boiler (a 100 hp) in rapid fashion as well as increased their production capability. We were able to deliver and install our LX-200 boiler to them within two weeks.”

The Miura LX Series design consists of rows of vertical tubes sandwiched between two rectangular headers. Both headers are encased in a castable refractory with only the tubes exposed to flame and/or combustion gases. The upper header is attached to the lower header only by the tubes. As the tubes expand and contract, the headers float up and down accordingly.

According to the company, this “floating header” concept greatly reduces stress and allows for the use of cold feedwater without the fear of significant thermal shock while eliminating any “leaky tube” problems.