Safety valve is a mechanism designed to prevent excessive pressure buildup within a system, typically in machinery, equipment, or industrial processes. It functions by automatically releasing pressure when it reaches a predetermined threshold, thereby preventing damage to the system or catastrophic failure. Safety valves are crucial components in various applications, including steam boilers, pressure vessels, pipelines, and hydraulic systems, where maintaining safe operating conditions is essential. They provide a fail-safe mechanism to protect both equipment and personnel from the risks associated with overpressure situations.
Safety valves are opening and closing parts, subject to external forces in a normally closed state, when the equipment or pipeline medium pressure rises above the specified value, by discharging the medium to the outside of the system to prevent the pipeline or equipment medium pressure exceeds the specified value.
Reliable Sealing - leakage loss of medium, pollution of the environment, endanger safety, accelerate the damage to the sealing surface.
Timely Closure after Jumping - to prevent the system pressure from decreasing too much, to reduce the excessive loss of media.
Stable Discharge - safety valves need to be stable after opening to maintain the state of discharge, and have good mechanical properties, that is, no frequency jump, vibration, jamming and other undesirable phenomena.
Open Timely and Accurate - this is the most basic requirements for the performance of the safety valve action. Safety valve inlet pressure reaches the pre-specified calibration pressure value, the safety valve flap should be accurately open, and quickly reach the prescribed opening height.
Safety valves are mainly used in pressurized equipment, boilers, pressure vessels or pipelines as pressure protection devices and safety protection valves.
When the pressure of the equipment is higher than the allowable value, the safety valve can automatically open, and then the full amount of discharge to prevent the equipment pressure continues to rise.
When the pressure drops to a specified value, the safety valve can be closed in time to avoid excessive pressure reduction, control the pressure does not exceed the specified value, and automatically prevent accidents that may occur due to overpressurization.
Therefore, the safety valve is also known as the pressure vessel of the final protection device, in the application of the safety valve, must follow the requirements of its applicable norms, in order to ensure that the production is carried out normally.
Before we dive into the details of floating safety valve design, let's define the key components of a safety valve:
1. Expansion chamber: The expansion chamber increases the surface area that the system's media pushes against to open the safety valve, allowing it to open rapidly.
2. Spring: The spring's stiffness determines at which pressure the system's media can begin to open the valve.
3. Disc: The disc sits on the nozzle and moves up and down to allow or prevent flow through the safety valve.
4. Nozzle ring: The nozzle ring affects the pressure at which the disc reseats. A high setting can cause the disc to reseat too late, while a low setting can lead to the disc randomly opening and closing when it should not.
5. Nozzle: The nozzle controls the disc surface area that the media interacts with before the valve opens. This causes the media to work against a larger surface area when the valve opens, increasing the force acting on the disc and opening the disc rapidly.
A safety valve's purpose is primarily for industrial applications to protect against overpressure, which can cause dangerous situations such as fire or explosions. Industrial safety valves are often found in:
- Oil, gas, and petroleum industry: For example, subsurface safety valves, or downhole safety valves, are common on offshore oil wells. In the case of equipment malfunction, a safety valve can shut off rapidly to prevent oil and gas from flowing up the well in unsafe conditions.
- Energy: Safety valves in power plants are common for compressible gasses such as steam and air.
- Sanitary: Stainless steel safety valves are ideal for industries that require sanitary conditions. For example, in the food, beverage, and pharmaceutical industries.
- HVAC: Safety valves relieve pressure in the case of blocked discharge, thermal expansion, or external heat that can damage the components.
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