Steam tracing is used primarily to maintain a reasonable product temperature and viscosity in order to simplify pumping and avoid freezing, solidification, and stagnation.
Although the rates of condensate are relatively small, steam trap populations will be large since all tracer lines need to be individually trapped.
Manifolds can also be used to collect condensate from the pipeline drainages of a big plant where there is a high amount of drainage points with a separate steam trap.
For ease of design and layout, condensate from steam traps is collected in a manifold.
The steam to the tracers can be distributed utilizing a similar manifold arrangement.
