Valves are extremely versatile. If the type is selected and used improperly, the valve will leak, causing various accidents such as fire, explosion, poisoning, burns, energy waste, equipment corrosion, material consumption, environmental pollution, and even production suspensions, the consequences will be unimaginable.

How to choose the right valve is the primary issue for users and engineers.

The selection of valves should meet the following four basic principles.

#1 Safety and reliability

Production requirements in petrochemical, power station, metallurgical and other industries require continuous, stable and long-term operation.

Therefore, the required valve should have high reliability and large safety factor. It cannot cause major production safety and personal injury and death due to valve failure. It can meet the requirements of long-term operation of the device. Long-term continuous production is the benefit; In addition, reduce or avoid leakage caused by valves, create clean, civilized factories and implement HSE management

#2 Meet the process production requirement

The valve should meet the requirements of using the medium, working pressure, working temperature and application, and that is also the most basic requirement for valve selection.

Want to know more information about the valves types, you can visit the post of Piping Valves classifications.

If the valve is required to provide overpressure protection and discharge excess media, safety valve and relief valve should be used.
Check valves should be used to prevent backflow of the medium during operation.

Steam traps should be used to automatically remove condensed water, air and other non-condensable gases from steam pipes and equipment while preventing steam from escaping.

In addition, when the medium is corrosive, materials with good corrosion resistance should be adopted.

#3 Easy operation, installation, maintenance and repair

After the valve is installed, the operator should correctly identify the valve direction, opening degree mark and indication signal, so as to facilitate timely and decisive handling of various emergency faults.

Meanwhile, the selected valve type structure should be as simple as possible, easy to installation, inspection and maintain. Such as fully welded ball valve.

#4 Economic

Under the premise of satisfying the normal use of the process pipeline, the valve with relatively low manufacturing cost and simple structure should be selected as much as possible to reduce the cost of the device, avoid waste of valve raw materials and reduce the cost of installation and maintenance of the valve in the later stage