NEW CONTROL VALVE TECHNOLOGY REQUIRING ENGINEERING SOLUTIONS TO REDUCE EROSION CORROSION AND FLOW ACCELERATED CORROSION

摘要

Due to the new control valve technology presented in this paper, inlet and outlet reducers must be used to replace globe valves up to five times its size in existing systems. In many water, steam or any high velocity fluid application, there are wear mechanisms, such as Erosion Corrosion (EC) and Flow Accelerated Corrosion (FAC), that cause wall-thinning and pitting in process equipment. This deterioration of the reducer wall can be extremely dangerous and, ultimately, can cause reducers to fail. In an attempt to lessen the risk of these failure modes, using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), Clarke Valve™ has engineered new asymmetric reducers that are cast into the body of the valve. These newly designed reducers with a coned-shaped inlet and a bell-shaped outlet will decrease failures in the field by reducing high velocity areas along the pipe wall, preventing unplanned downtime and unsafe system failures. A digital twin of both the off-the-shelf (OTS) reducers and the newly designed asymmetric reducers were created and, in support of the design process, CFD simulations were used to not only observe the deficiencies in the existing "off-the-shelf (OTS) reducers, but also optimize the newly integrated asymmetric reducers.