Southeastern Health Chooses Miura Boilers

In this video, learn why Southeastern Health chose Miura boilers for their recent steam upgrade. Continue below the video to read the transcript.

TRANSCRIPT: Southeastern Health in North Carolina has a history that dates back to 1906 and today provides services to more than 16,000 inpatients and 65,000 emergency patients annually. When it came time to change out their steam plant, Joe Buri, Director of Facility Services, initially planned to go with the traditional boilers they were using. But after attending a North Carolina Healthcare Engineer Association conference, he became intrigued with Miura boilers, which produce steam in less than five minutes, substantially reduce energy costs, and were easier to maintain.

Joseph Buri: “The Miura boilers, they're vertical so that was something that was different that you normally don't see. I think our challenge was just trying to get over the traditional boilers. Everybody's always has in their head they didn't have the traditional hand holes and manholes that you would typically see for cleaning purposes and then their ability to quickly provide steam.”

After doing their own research and working with Boiler Masters of North Carolina, a company that has been serving the energy needs of hospitals and other facilities in the region since 1980, Mr. Buri and his team became believers that these compact units could do the job and designed their new plant around Miura boilers. Installing four EX200 SGO Gas Oil Series high pressure steam boilers and a single 100 HP unit in an off-site laundry.

Joseph Buri: “Four Miura boilers allows us to stage based upon our demand. They're quick steamers. Because of that, allows us to be able to shut them off and not keep them in the steady warm-up mode. That allows us to use what we need and have off what we don't.”

Miura's EX Gas Oil Series high pressure steam boilers are the most versatile industrial steam boilers in the world. The EX design minimizes carryover and produces 99% dry saturated steam in less than five minutes from a cold start. Faster start up means less fuel used, greater savings and better efficiency.

Joseph Buri: “We've been saving about 20% of fuel in our main plant and our laundry has been up to 40% because we're able to shut that off at night. It's just used for production.”

EX Series are available in 100 HP and in 50 HP increments, up to 300 HP models. Their unique floating header design concept allows for even thermal expansion of the tubes; therefore, reducing stress points within the boiler. The leaky tube problems associated with fire tube and bend water tube designs have been eliminated.

Miura's low water content boilers have a range of impressive benefits, including enhanced reliability through their modular design, advance controls, and advanced monitoring, and a best in industry safety record with zero catastrophic vessel failures resulting in casualty.

Miura's modular approach also makes it easy to achieve an N+1 system, a redundancy required for hospitals that enhances overall reliability. Thus users never sacrifice production demand due to annual inspections on one boiler at a time.

James Jones: “To inspect them is a breeze. There's just five plugs that you take out to look down the tubes. You can do all this in one day. With the other boilers we had, you had to let it cool off for one day, take the manhole covers off the next day and then the third day you inspect and put it back together. So, we're saving two days of manpower on what used to take three days to do.”

Joseph Buri: “One of the other benefits of the Miura boilers is its quick ability to go from natural gas to fuel oil. There are times when we'll run for days on oil for various reasons. Flip the switch and we're on oil.”

Overall, Mr. Buri is very pleased that he switched from a traditional boiler name and went with Miura for quick steam, versatility and ease of maintenance.

Joseph Buri: “We've been very pleased with Miura boilers. They've performed better than we had expected by all means and our staff has been very happy with that as well.”