What are your steam leaks costing you?

Just for the sake of discussion, let’s say you have one little steam leak about the size of a match head somewhere in your system. We’ll assume that you have 150psig steam and that your cost to produce that steam is $9 per every 1000 pounds. According to Napier’s formula, your steam loss is about 103 pounds per hour. Looking at this over a year’s time, (103 X 24 X 365/1000)($9), that one little leak is costing you about $8,120 each year.