High performance butterfly valves for extreme applications

High-performance butterfly valves are essential for many industrial applications such as throttling control. However, when considering valves for extreme applications, it is important that your butterfly valve is purposefully manufactured to withstand these pressures. In this blog, PIF looks at high-performance butterfly valves and which applications depend on these specially designed products.

Which applications use high-performance butterfly valves

Widely used for throttling control, high-performance butterfly valves typically do a good job for applications with a constant pressure drop or slow process loops. They improve on the valve usage for throttling applications offered by standard butterfly valves, whilst offering outstanding performance and more accurate flow control. In addition, they also offer long-term positive bi-directional shut-off in both control as well as on-off applications.

Examples of which industries would use high-performance butterfly valves in their applications include:

• Oil and Gas
• Chemical and Petrochemical
• Pulp and Paper
• Water and Wastewater
• HVAC

Because of their cost-effective, yet robust design, there are a variety of different variations on butterfly valves available to buy on the market. While this workhorse butterfly valve has a robust compatibility for the throttling process, careful consideration must be afforded when deciding which variation is right for more extreme applications.

High-performance butterfly valves for aggressive media

Although high-performance butterfly valves have a wide service range to cover everything from general applications to more aggressive media, it is important to understand which valve will work best with certain environments.

For example, if the butterfly valve is confronted with harsh chemicals associated with chemical processing or the potentially explosive environment of the oil and gas industry, it needs to be able to withstand extreme pressure and temperatures.

In such cases, users might opt for a double offset butterfly valve. This variant of a high-performance valve is ideal for applications which involve higher pressures and temperatures, accommodating up to 1200º F and 1440 psig respectively. Whilst for refinery and off-shore applications where more extreme conditions exist, a triple offset butterfly valve may be preferred due to its fire-safe reputation and metal-on-metal disc.

Understanding how your high-performance butterfly valve works and which media it works best with is the key to efficient throttling control in extreme applications.

For more information about butterfly valves in general, take a look at this article and learn what a butterfly is and what it is used for.