Analysis of the causes of jamming in the pump outlet ball valve and solutions
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As the title suggests, our facility has 5 Luer pumps, and the ball valves at the outlet of four of them are experiencing varying degrees of sticking – they stop moving once reached a certain opening degree; one can only operate them manually, by closing them slightly and then opening them again, and this back-and-forth process needs to be repeated several times. The pump outlet pressure is 2-6 MPa, and there is no sticking issue with the ball valves elsewhere. The operating conditions (pressure, temperature, properties of the medium, pump parameters) of the several other Luer pump units in another plant site, which were put into use a year later, were basically the same, yet this phenomenon did not occur there. The jamming of the outlet ball valve prevents the pump from starting properly; could someone please help analyze this? What might be the reasons for the jamming of the outlet ball valve? And the corresponding solutions? Thank you
Generally, ball valve sticking is caused by insufficient concentricity of the sealing pair or the valve stem.
It’s best to re-evaluate the several ball valves in the two plant sites, taking into account the choice between soft and hard seals, the torque of the actuators, as well as the pressure and nature of the medium – these factors directly affect their performance in use.
Is it the difference between fixed ball valves and non-fixed ball valves? Our factory initially used non-fixed ball valves, which tended to get stuck easily; switching to fixed ball valves improved the situation significantly