Industrial valve maintenance falls under two categories; planned and response maintenance. An effective planned (or preventative) maintenance program requires a schedule for inspecting and servicing the valve. In any given application, there are several variables that can affect a valve’s wear rate and service life. Even with this information at hand, the mechanics and mathematical prediction of wear is highly complex. Therefore, valve performance and service life are best determined through the periodic inspection and maintenance of valves that are installed and in operation.
Much less ideal is response (or emergency) maintenance, which is executed when a valve fails, or its performance has degraded to a point where it is detrimental to the process. The resulting outage leads to unplanned downtime, lost production, additional labour costs, etc. Proper preventative measures will greatly reduce the occurrence of such maintenance.
Why Have Spare Parts in Inventory?
Once worn out, valves are generally removed from service, discarded and replaced with new. However, certain premium valves (such as SlurryFlo control valves) incorporate field replaceable wear components. As these components are typically custom engineered for the client’s application, manufacturing lead times should be considered when creating a planned maintenance program.
Once the average service life of these wear components has been established, having spare parts on hand will simplify the maintenance process. Holding spare parts in inventory also minimizes the negative impact should the valve unexpectedly require emergency service.
REPLACEABLE TRIM COMPONENTS ON SLURRYFLO CONTROL VALVES
Due to our patented SlurryFlo Control Valve design, only the trim components (gate, seat plate and bore liner) are exposed to erosive flow. Once they do eventually wear out, the parts can be field replaced to reset the service life clock. Each trim replacement essentially provides the client with a new valve at a fraction of the cost.
Similarly, if flow conditions ever change, a new seat plate can be specified to provide an increase or decrease in flow. There is no need to replace the entire valve assembly which is often the case with other valve designs.
