Features

Are Valves from Low-Cost Countries Getting Better?

The last 25 years have seen standards created and implemented to increase the quality and repeatability of valves procured from low-cost manufacturing sources around the world. As part of the process, potential sellers into the U.S. market have reportedly spent millions of dollars improving facilities and processes. But what’s the consensus: has it worked?

Intelligent Servicing of Valves During Aging Plant Shutdowns

Shutdowns, turnarounds and outages (STOs) play a major role in plant safety, performance, reliability and profitability. However, they take time and resources.

Achieving Predictable Valve Performance for Safety Applications

A focus on having the proper specification, design and integration of final elements is key in the actuation of valves for the process industry. As users collect more data through testing methods, they are discovering that final element assemblies are not always performing reliably throughout their mission time. For example, two observed failures are torque/force that is insufficient to move the valve to the safe state and mechanical failure of final element components from stress beyond the element’s ultimate strength. These two failure modes are evidence of a lack of robustness in the current process used to specify and design integrated final element assemblies.

Valves with All the Trimmings

The term valve trim has been around for about 150 years—shortened at one point from the word: “trimmings,” a term in vogue until the late 1930s.

Check Valves in LNG Cryogenic Service

Because natural gas is currently considered a good source of energy for both environmental and economic reasons, it’s growing in use. This trend promises to continue worldwide for many years to come.