【Ten Years of Great Development in Chemical Processing Equipment】The Development and Industrial Application of Domestic Wear-Resistant Ball Valves of S-ZORB from 2004 to 2012

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Ten years of rapid development in chemical technology – praise for China’s prosperity and strength. This is just a starting point; more participation from everyone will make things even more lively. HaiChuan becomes even better with you here; we welcome everyone to join in the forum discussions. It’s hot in July, so be careful to prevent fires. ---------------------------------------------- Development and industrial application of domestically produced wear-resistant ball valves. On September 21, 2012, the meeting on “Development and Industrial Application of S-ZORB Domestic Wear-Resistant Ball Valves”, jointly developed by SHK Group and Yanshan Petrochemical and organized by Sinopec’s Technology Department, was successfully held at Sinopec’s headquarters in Beijing. This meeting was chaired by Professor-level Senior Engineer Gong Hong from the Storage and Handling Department, with Director Jia Penglin serving as the head of the evaluation committee. Thirteen experts from various organizations, including Yanshan Branch, Shanghai KAIWEIXI Valve Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as SHK Group), Sinopec’s Materials and Equipment Department, Guangzhou Branch, Cangzhou Branch, and SEI, attended the meeting. Yanshan Petrochemical’s S-ZORB unit is a gasoline adsorption desulfurization plant built using technology imported from ConocoPhillips of the United States; it is also an important facility for producing gasoline that meets Beijing Standard IV requirements. The valves used for the fluidized transport of the adsorbent between the reactor, regenerator, and lock hoppers in this device operate frequently under harsh conditions; they are required to achieve VI-grade sealing with zero leakage, in order to prevent dangerous interactions between high-temperature hydrogen and oxygen. Before October 2009, all of these wear-resistant ball valves were imported products; the high cost of purchasing imported valves, long lead times for spare parts, and other factors affected the long-term safe and stable operation of the installations. To this end, since 2009, SHK Group has established high-temperature material testing facilities and a laboratory for wear-resistant materials. It has introduced robotic spraying technology from Japan as well as the first set of high-precision five-axis spherical machining centers, thereby optimizing the manufacturing technology for wear-resistant ball valves. The group has also applied for patents covering its own proprietary technologies; these technologies not only address the leakage problems caused by dust entering the sealing surfaces of the ball valves, but also improve the roundness and fit accuracy of the ball and valve seat, as well as the surface finish, while enhancing the wear resistance of the valves. This provides a technical foundation for the processing and manufacture of ultra-wear-resistant ball valves. On this basis, the SHK Group produced three domestic wear-resistant ball valves of the CL600 and DN80 types; the cost of each such valve was about 180,000 yuan less than that of imported ball valves. One of these valves was randomly selected and subjected to 10,000 opening and closing tests using the first set of S-ZORB wear-resistant ball valve simulation testing equipment, achieving zero leakage. Following expert evaluation, the Yanshan Branch installed the aforementioned domestic ball valves in the locations of the lock hoppers XV-1009, XV-1006, and XV-1017 on November 12, 2009, January 4, 2010, and March 2, 2010, respectively, and put them into operation. The wear-resistant ball valve at location XV-1009 has been operating stably for 22 months to date, fully meeting the requirements of the production process, which indicates that the overall technology of domestic wear-resistant ball valves has reached an advanced level. In the coming years, more than a dozen S-ZORB units will be built successively. Each S-ZORB unit is equipped with approximately 30 wear-resistant programmable ball valves and 81 manual wear-resistant ball valves. If all the new valves are domestic wear-resistant types, and assuming that each such valve saves 100,000 yuan compared to imported ones, then each unit will save over 10 million yuan in investment costs, resulting in significant benefits. This joint development project has received strong support from Sinopec’s headquarters, Yanshan Petrochemical, and other relevant subsidiaries of Sinopec. The programmable wear-resistant ball valve for S-ZORB units, developed jointly by SHK Group and Yanshan Petrochemical, not only enables the localization of such valves, breaking the technological monopoly of certain brands over the key valves used in S-ZORB units and reducing manufacturers’ reliance on imported equipment; it also has significant benefits in terms of shortening delivery times, reducing equipment costs, extending the service life of the equipment, and facilitating maintenance.