Industry News

In the field, reliability matters more than anything else. That’s especially true in oil and gas applications across North America, where valves are exposed to high pressure, corrosive fluids, and thermal cycling on a daily basis. 

As industrial plants transition toward smarter operations—driven by automation, remote monitoring, and predictive maintenance—valve systems are being retrofitted with intelligent actuators and control units. 

Support ring such parts, in the whole seal structure belongs to the ‘hidden’ key parts. Many users do not pay much attention to it, but in fact, once the design or processing is not in place, the compression force distribution of the valve seat seal, PTFE ring will have a great impact, especially in the high-pressure or temperature fluctuations in the environment more obvious.

In the structure of ball valves and gate valves, the stuffing box as the core component of the stem sealing system, although static structure, but directly undertake the key task of preventing media leakage.

The lower shaft of a fixed ball valve is often an easily overlooked but costly part to get wrong. Whether the ball core rotates smoothly and whether the axis is shifted or not, it often depends on whether the size and centre datum of this lower shaft have been controlled in the machining and assembly stages.

After doing valve projects for these years, to be honest, I have seen too many cases of valve seat problems. Most of the time, the user complains about valve leakage, in fact, not a spool problem, but the valve seat has long been worn out. 

Valve body is the most basic and most easily ignored part of the valve. The structure seems simple, in fact, from the casting method, material selection to the dimensional accuracy, all determine whether the valve can run for a long time without leakage, without deformation.

In large-scale control systems in the metallurgical industry, the performance of ball valves and gate valve fittings directly affects the operational stability of furnace pipelines and cooling water systems.

In the valve structure, the valve stem does not seem complicated, but as long as you have run through the high temperature and high pressure system, you know that it is one of the most problem-prone parts.

The structure of the bonnet is not much of a problem in small valves, but once it is above DN400, the assembly error is easy to be exposed. Many ball valves or gate valves on the project site have abnormal opening and closing or packing failure, and they are all related to the mismatch or deviation of the valve cover.