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Steam control valve with compact design reduces costs and leakages in brewery application

One of the largest and most popular breweries in Baden-Wüttemberg, Germany, was experiencing problems with their existing globe control valves used to control steam.

Whilst undertaking scheduled modernisation of the plant, the brewery had the opportunity to increase efficiency, reduce costs and improve the service life and operation of the control valves installed.

Reduce occurences of valve failure/leakages

The brewery identified the following application challenges;

  • Reduce occurrences of costly valve repairs and replacements
  • Reduce costly and dangerous valve leakages
  • Reduce installation and maintenance costs
  • Reduce space requirements

Sliding gate control valves for improved valve service life

Sliding gate control valve plates

Read on to understand how the sliding gate control valves by Schubert & Salzer were installed to control the amount of steam pressure and to act as fast-acting emergency shut-off valves in the event of power failure.

The sliding gate control valve prevents valve failures and valve leakages.

The conventional globe control valves installed at the brewery were metal seated and were therefore highly susceptible to scoring. Inevitably, this lead to costly and dangerous leakages of steam for the brewery.

The sliding gate control valve provides a seal without a metal seat, meaning the valve is significantly less susceptible to scoring and leakages, compared to conventional globe valve. Furthermore, the sliding gate control valves offers excellent leak tightness due to the pressure from the media acting against the moveable valve plate, boosting the sealing function of the valve. The self-lapping action of the moveable discs provides extremely low leakage rates of less than 0.0001% of the KVS value.

All in all, the sliding gate valve provides a more reliable and a more accurate control valve in comparison to globe-type control valves.

The sliding gate valves offers reduced space requirements

A sliding gate valve is extremely narrow in construction and fits easily between 2 flanges. A DN150/6” sliding gate valve (including actuator) weighs only 10% of the weight of a globe type control valve of the same nominal bore (14.2KG compared to 150KG!!)

The compact construction and the consequent reduced space requirements were key decision criterion for the brewery. Not only could the brewery benefit from more free space, this also meant the valves could be installed, removed and maintained by a single engineer. This resulted in significant cost savings due to reduced maintenance time and increased productivity of the application.

Sliding gate control valve in application

The sliding gate control valves offers reduced maintenance costs

The ease of maintaining the sliding gate control valves added to the cost savings described above. When conventional valves require maintenance, the complete valve body has to be dismantled to provide access to the sealing elements of the valve – this generally requires two engineers. With the sliding gate valve, only one engineer is required to remove and maintain the throttling element and this can be done on-site. Once the valve has been removed from the process, a single screw is removed to access the operating unit, which can then be pressed out and exchanged – it is as easy as that!

Click here to read about the innovative design of Schubert & Salzer’s sliding gate control valve and the comparative advantages this design offers to applications controlling liquid, vapour or gaseous media.

To ask Scubert & Salzer experts a technical question in our Solution Centre click here. To contact Schubert & Salzer directly, please click on their PIF profile.

Company Profile

Schubert and Salzer Inc

Schubert & Salzer manufactures innovative valves and control products to a wide range of process industries for all of North and South America.

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