How are steam boilers used in hospitals?

BUILDING HEAT

The most obvious use of boilers in any building, including hospitals, is typically heating for the facility. A reliable steam boiler is one of the most economical ways to provide heat across a large space, especially one with multiple floors. The steam produced by boilers gets pumped throughout the hospital and is responsible for keeping both patients and staff warm throughout the day and night. Even in warmer climates, most hospitals need their boiler working hard early in the morning to make sure every room in the hospital reaches a comfortable temperature.

HUMIDIFICATION

In hospitals, keeping a comfortable temperature is important, but maintaining the right level of humidity can be just as important. For the most part, the relative humidity inside a hospital needs to be somewhere between 30% and 60%, depending on the specific hospital. Certain viruses, most notably the flu, are more likely to survive in environments that have particularly high or particularly low humidity.

STERILIZATION

Hospitals use a wide array of medical equipment, tools, and instruments, especially those used to perform surgeries. Of course, those utensils need to be sterilized before they are used on a sick patient. This is another important use of boilers in hospitals. A portion of the steam produced by boilers gets pumped into an autoclave sterilizer, which is usually located in a lab or surgical area. The hot steam helps to kill any germs and bacteria on medical tools, making sure they are free of any harmful microorganisms. Steam heat is also a safer way to sterilize than using potentially harmful chemical agents.

LAUNDRY

Most people who visit hospitals never see the laundry room, but if they did, they’d understand the massive amounts of laundry hospitals do on a daily basis. After all, patients need all of the gowns, sheets, and towels they use to be completely clean and free of germs. Hospital boiler systems thus need to be robust enough to produce all the steam necessary to heat the water used in the laundry room. In fact, it’s common for the laundry room of a hospital to have its own boiler separate from the main steam plant, which tells you how much hospital laundry rooms rely on steam from boilers.

KITCHEN

Much like the laundry room, most people don’t realize how much hospital kitchens rely on the boiler system. The kitchen staff must prepare meals for every patient in the hospital, as well as most of the staff and visitors. Cooking all of those meals requires a lot of hot water, not to mention all the dishes that need to be cleaned and sterilized before they can be used again. Keeping that in mind, it should be easy to see why the hospital boiler system plays an important role in the kitchen.