Fazrin Latif and the boiler that would't sleep

Fazrin Latif wasn’t just a boiler engineer — he was a boiler man.
Where other people saw steam drums, furnace walls, and stacks of refractory bricks, Fazrin saw a living, breathing machine.

In the heart of the palm oil biomass plant, Boiler 5 stood like a trusted warhorse. It had carried the factory through breakdowns, production surges, and even one disastrous fuel shortage during monsoon season. Fazrin had been there for every start-up, every soot-blow, and every nerve-wracking pressure test.

But now, management had a new idea.

Two boilers. One running. One “standing by.”
“Peace of mind,” they called it.
“A safety net,” they said in meetings.

On paper, Fazrin understood the theory. If Boiler 5 failed, Boiler 6 would step in. The factory would keep running without a hiccup. No one would lose sleep.

But Fazrin knew the truth — standby in a biomass world was a fairy tale.

A real standby had to be warmed every day, kept close to pressure, and treated like it could take over at any moment. That meant burning fuel, assigning operators, logging parameters… every single day. And here in the real world, with tight fuel rations and overloaded crews, that wasn’t going to happen.

He had seen it before:
A cold standby left for days.
Moisture beading on tubes.
SOx and NOx residues mixing with the dampness.
Acid quietly eating steel from the inside.

By the time anyone noticed, wall thickness readings told a grim story — steel thinned, corrosion patterns like cancer spreading across the tubes. And then the budget meetings began:
“We need a retube.”
“It’s normal, every 10 years.”

Normal? Fazrin’s jaw clenched every time he heard that word.

To him, calling premature retubing “normal” was like buying a brand-new truck and replacing the chassis every year — then patting yourself on the back for “good maintenance.”

The real tragedy? A single, well-maintained boiler like his beloved Boiler 5 could easily outlive a two-boiler setup where one sat rotting in a corner. But convincing management was like shouting into the wind.

So Fazrin made a vow — if Boiler 6 was going to be there, it wasn’t going to die in silence. He scheduled periodic warm-ups, monitored tube metal temperatures, and fought to keep flue gas above the acid dew point. He logged everything, even when no one asked.

Some nights, walking past the boiler house, Fazrin would rest a hand on Boiler 5’s warm shell.
“You’re not alone, old friend,” he’d whisper. “I’ll keep them from turning you into a museum piece before your time.”

Because to him, a boiler wasn’t just a piece of equipment.
It was the beating heart of the plant.
And a heart only works if you keep it alive — not just on paper, but in practice.