Oil Refinery Chooses Kinetrol for Fast Closing 6" Ball Valve

6" ball valve with failing actuator.

A Midwestern oil refinery was using a 6" ball valve with a cylinder actuator in a fast closing application. The ball valve was required to close in under 1 second with a duty cycle of 8 operations per day. Unfortunately, the cylinder actuator response became increasingly sluggish over time due to internal component wear. The customer tried replacing the cylinder actuator with the same model, but it too developed the problem in under a year.

The specified Kinetrol actuator and
high Cv solenoid valve.

The local Kinetrol Distributor Sales Representative and Kinetrol Regional Sales Manager worked together to engineer a better solution. They knew the Kinetrol rotary spring unit would provide enough torque to close the valve quickly, but the concern was with the actuator exhaust venting.

After calculating the air flow characteristics of the actuator and  the response time of the spring, they knew the critical element was finding a high flow capacity solenoid valve. It needed to be capable of dumping the actuator air quickly enough to close the actuator in under 1 second.

The result was a recommendation to use a Kinetrol model 147-120-4900L spring return actuator with a third party, high Cv (9.7), solenoid valve.

Once installed the 6" ball valve and Kinetrol assembly worked perfectly and, at the time of this writing, has been in service for 3.5 years, operating with no downtime and maintaining the under 1 second closing requirement.

For more information, contact Kinetrol USA. Call 972-447-9443 or visit https://kinetrolusa.com.

20" High Performance Butterfly Valve Closed in Under 1/2 Second!

Fast closing Kinetrol actuator

This video demonstrates how quickly a large butterfly valve can be closed with a Kinetrol vane actuator spring return unit. In this case, it's a 20" stainless steel high performance butterfly valve (HPBV) being tested in the shop.

You'll note the valve takes about 11 seconds to open, but only 0.4 seconds to close, using the Kinetrol spring return unit.

Quick closing valves are used in emergency situations to stop the flow of fluids that may contribute to uncontrolled combustion, cause backstream contamination, or allow spillage of hazardous materials.