Valves are used in every plant or process application worldwide. They are essential for modulating, regulating or isolating media in pipelines. Increasingly, engineers and plant designers are expecting more form their valves – they want them to last longer, perform better, wear less, erode less and fail less – all in more severe or harsh environments.
Bundor aim to be leaders in the design and manufacture of Triple Offset Butterfly Valves and so they undertook research to investigate which materials were most suitable for their valves in severe applications.
Aims and Objectives
To identify suitable coatings which can be applied to the sealing surfaces of a Triple Offset Butterfly Valve.
To identify the most common wear mechanisms which a Triple Offset Butterfly Valve may encounter
To perform ‘wear’ tests on a series of coatings to identify the most effective coating
Bundor found that TiN (Titanium Nitride) achieved the greatest results under both the erosion and abrasion wear mechanisms. It was found the substrate has a large influence on the coating ability to resist wear and it was found the rate of erosion is directly related to particle velocity.
The industry standard is to use a coating called Stellite 6 on sealing components, however when the valve is open and the sealing components are in full flow path, Stellite wears out quickly and leads to valve leakages and premature failure.
Based on these findings,Bundor use TiN as standard in their range of Triple Offset Valves. TiN coatings do not incur more costs for the end-user, and it is a much more durable coating to use in severe applications.
