Cortec® released a new demonstration video on September 17 showing how Boiler Lizard® goes into a boiler for dry layup. The whole procedure runs under two minutes on camera, which is roughly how long it takes in the boiler room. If you have been putting off a layup plan because it sounded like a project, this is the video to watch before the heating season turns over.
We stock Boiler Lizard in Illinois, so here is the procedure with the questions our customers actually ask attached to it.
What Boiler Lizard does while the boiler sits
An idle boiler is a corrosion problem whether you drain it or not. Drain it and you leave a warm, damp, oxygen-rich enclosure with bare waterside steel in it. Leave it wet without treatment and you get the same result more slowly. Either way the damage happens during the shutdown, and you find it at startup.
Boiler Lizard is Vapor phase Corrosion Inhibitor powder packed in a polyvinyl alcohol water-soluble bag, supplied one bag to a shipping tube at 1.5 kg (3.3 lb). Once the inner bag is opened inside the drained boiler, the inhibitors leave the powder as a vapor, distribute through the enclosure, and adsorb as a thin molecular layer on the metal surfaces they reach. That layer does not need line-of-sight and does not need a dry surface. Cortec published data describes the protection holding up even in the presence of moisture, which matters in a boiler that never drains completely.
The formulation carries no phosphates, no heavy metals, no nitrites, and no free amines. For plants that have been working to get nitrites and amines out of their water treatment program, that is usually the deciding detail rather than a footnote.
The application procedure, step by step
- Drain and open the boiler. Dry layup starts with a drained waterside. Get it as empty as the design allows; you do not need it bone dry.
- Remove the outer packaging. The product ships in a tube inside outer packaging. Take the outer wrap off first.
- Slit the inner package open. This is the step that starts the clock. Slitting the inner bag lets the vapor phase inhibitors out of the powder and into the enclosure. Do it at the boiler, not at the storeroom.
- Cradle it with the shipping tube. Split the shipping tube lengthwise and use the halves as a chute to slide the opened unit through the handhole or manway and lay it flat on the waterside. A flat unit distributes better than one standing on end or wedged against a tube.
- Close and secure the boiler. The inhibitors only work in a closed enclosure. Gaskets, handhole covers and vents all get buttoned up the same as any other layup.
How many units
Cortec’s published dosage for small to mid-size boilers is one Boiler Lizard per 1,000 gallons of boiler volume. Round up rather than down, and count the volume of the boiler itself, not the whole loop. If you are working on something larger than a package boiler, or on an HRSG, call us before you order — the dosing logic changes and there are better-suited products in the same family.
Startup: nothing to take back out
This is the part people do not believe the first time. There is no removal step. The PVA bag and the powder dissolve when the boiler is refilled, and the boiler goes back into service. Nobody crawls back in to retrieve anything, which is the whole reason a two-minute video is enough to cover the procedure.
Dry layup is not always the right answer
Boiler Lizard is a dry layup product. If your plan is to keep the boiler wet through the shutdown, or if you are laying up a closed loop rather than the boiler itself, the product changes. We wrote up that decision separately in wet lay-up vs. dry lay-up for an idle boiler, and the fogging route — where you atomize inhibitor into the enclosure instead of setting a bag in it — is covered in VpCI-337 fogging dose for boiler layup. If you are building the whole shutdown checklist from scratch, start with how to lay up a boiler for seasonal shutdown.
One scheduling note. The outage that gets the boiler laid up is the same outage that frees up the maintenance crew, so it is the sensible window for the deferred work that needs equipment down — degreasing a backlog of pump and valve internals through an aqueous parts washer, or getting steel and tanks blasted and recoated. Plants that plan both in one pass get both done.
Which products
- Cortec Boiler Lizard — VpCI dry layup corrosion inhibitor for boilers. The product in the video. One unit per 1,000 gallons, dry layup only.
- Cortec VpCI-609 water-soluble VpCI powder, 5 lb and the 50 lb size. Wet layup and hydrotest side of the same job, dosed into the water rather than set in the enclosure.
- Cortec VpCI-337 waterborne fogging corrosion inhibitor, 5 gallon. For enclosures you would rather fog than open.
- Cortec EcoAir 337 interior fogging corrosion inhibitor, 13 oz. The aerosol version for small voids, headers and control cabinets during the same outage.
- Cortec VpCI-308 powder pouch, 35 ft³. For the dry enclosures around the boiler — panels, cabinets, spare parts crates.
- VpCI product selection guide if you are matching a product to a metal and an environment, and concentration testing charts if you are dosing a wet layup and need to verify it.
If you want a second opinion on the layup plan
Most of the boiler layup calls we take are not really about which product. They are about a plant that has done the same thing for years, found pitting at startup, and wants somebody to look at the sequence. We are glad to do that, and it does not have to turn into an order. Get in touch with your boiler volume, how long it will sit, and whether you are going wet or dry, and we will tell you what we would do.
