Today’s petrochemical and process industries increasingly depend on higher levels of automation, which in turn require enhanced monitoring and control of valve position and operational readiness. In the past, many valves were deployed without any monitoring devices; however, today’s processes require feedback not only for valve position monitoring but also for remote or automated control of valve actuators. In addition to new valves with feedback installed on projects, existing valves are being retrofitted with feedback devices or upgraded with more modern feedback technology. One of those is Magnetostrictive Linear Displacement Transducers (MLDTs).
Read more ...
Plant operators across the world are tasked with maximizing efficiency and output from existing facilities, which can be a major challenge when there are many valves and actuators. Plant management strategy to accomplish this task includes developing a better understanding of how valve and control assets perform in the field and to adopt preventative maintenance to minimize plant downtime. Valve positioner technology today has evolved to help plant managers with this major challenge.
When it comes to getting automation parts shipped, everyone in our industry wants to receive those parts as quickly as possible—it’s a natural inclination. But often, speed is more than nice—it’s critical.
To be of value, valves must be attached to a piping system. How that attachment occurs has changed over time. For decades, screwed or flanged connections were the only way to go. However, the perfection of fusion welding techniques in the 1930s led the way for new methods of joining piping components, including valves. These new ways are the butt-weld (BWE) (Figure 1) and socket-weld (SW) (Figure 2) end connections.
FREE SUBSCRIPTION*
