Ball Valves - Industrial Accessories Company - #1

A ball valve opens by turning a handle attached to a ball inside the valve. The ball has a hole, or port, through the middle so that when the port is in line with both ends of the valve, flow will occur. When the valve is closed, the hole is perpendicular to the ends of the valve, and flow is blocked. The handle position indicates the hole, or port's, alignment.

Ball valves are durable and usually achieve perfect shutoff, even after years of use. They are therefore an excellent choice for shutoff applications and preferred to globe valves and gate valves for this purpose. They do not offer the fine control that may be necessary in throttling applications but are still sometimes used for this purpose.

There are four general body styles of ball valves: single body, split body, top entry, and welded.

There are four general types of ball valves: full port, standard port, reduced port, and v port.

• A full port ball valve has an oversized ballso that the hole in the ball is the same size as the pipeline resulting in lower friction loss. Flow is unrestricted, but the valve is larger.

• A standard port ball valve is usually less expensive, but has a smaller ball and a correspondingly smaller port. Flow through this valve is one pipe size smaller than the valve's pipe size resulting in slightly restricted flow.

In reduced port ball valves, flow through the valve is one pipe size smaller than the valve's pipe size resulting in restricted low.

A v port ball valve has either a V shaped ball or a V shaped seat. This allows the orifice to be opened and closed in a more controlled manner with a closer to linear flow characteristic. When the valve is in the closed position and opening is commenced the small end of the V is opened first allowing stable flow control during this stage. This type of design requires a generally more robust construction due to higher velocities of the fluids, which would quickly damage a standard valve.

Atrunnion ball valve has a mechanical means ofanchoring the ball at the top and the bottom, this design is usually applied on larger and higher pressure valves - 4 inch and above and 600 psi and above.

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PB106001