Kinetrol Actuator "Insures" Rapid Valve Closing to Protect Equipment, Infrastructure, and Personnel

20" high performance
butterfly valve with
Kinetrol actuator

An insurance mandate required a major chemical company who produces PTA (Purified Terephthalic Acid) to install a 20" automatic high performance butterfly valve with the capability to stroke from fully opened to fully closed in less than one second.

Requirement:

It's necessary to prevent a $30M USD axial process air compressor from rapidly going into an overspeed condition that could harm equipment, infrastructure, and personnel. 

Challenge:

The biggest challenges: stroking the valve in under one second, but without slamming the butterfly disc into the stops which can damage the valve and nearby equipment. 

Solution:

Kinetrol's expertise in rapid cycling enabled us to size, select, and perform certified cycle time tests on the final assembly. This shut out any competition. 

Assembly: 

20" class 300 high performance butterfly valve, Kinetrol 207-120 with a 2" automatic L-Port, 3-way, compressed air supply ball valve with 097-F120, X-proof solenoid, and two exhaust silencers coupled to the size 20 supply port. Open / closed limit switch assembly. Robust SST mounting bracket and coupling. The closure time once actuator air is exhausted: 0.13 seconds.

 

Kinetrol Vane Actuators Replace High Maintenance Pneumatic Cylinders in Water Treatment Plant

Kinetrol Rotary Vane Actuator

A Kinetrol USA Western Distributor was told by a water treatment plant operator that two 10" Pratt butterfly valves with cylinder actuators were not working reliably. The valves were okay, but the pneumatic cylinders were a maintenance nightmare. Not only did they introduce far too much hysteresis (slop) in the actuator-to-valve movement, but they also leaked air, and in the winter time had to have a heater placed next to them to keep the cylinders from sticking. The cylinder seals were so poor moisture would penetrate the cylinder and freeze, rendering the actuator unresponsive.

An experienced, application savvy Distributor came to the water treatment plant's rescue. After looking at the application the Sales Engineer specified new butterfly valves and Kinetrol Model 14 double acting actuators, manual gear overrides, AP positioners with I/P, ULS limit switches, angle retransmit, and point-of-use filters.  He knew the Kinetrol actuators would not only eliminate the constant maintenance, but also provide much tighter control.

After 1 year of continuous service, the actuators have performed flawlessly without any downtime. The maintenance crew at the water treatment plant are so pleased they plan on standardizing.

Kinetrol Actuators. Field Tested. Application Driven.

Kinetrol actuators on butterfly valves for water treatment plant.

Segment Ball Control Valve with Vane Actuator, Pneumatic Positioner, and I/P Transmitter

Actuator and Positioner

Ball, plug and butterfly valves all belong to a class of valves commonly referred to as "quarter-turn" valves. This refers the 90 deg (angular) rotation required to go from full closed, to full open position.

In most cases standard ball, plug, or butterfly valves are not the best choice as control valves (where the process media has to be modulated or throttled). Standard ball, plug and butterfly valves usually introduce very non-linear, dynamic flow coefficients. Furthermore, they can introduce undesirable turbulence to your piping system.

As a means to linearize flow coefficients and reduce turbulent flow, the machining, or characterization, of the valve disk is done so that the machined shape allows for more optimized flow.

For ball valves in particular, machining the ball's flow port with a "V", or even by machining the ball more radically, can deliver excellent flow curves. A term for a more radically machined ball is the "segment ball" (sometimes called "segmented").  In the following video you can see how a Kinetrol pneumatic actuator, postioner, and I/P transmitter team up with a segment ball valve foe an excellent control valve.