The paper is dedicated to the issues of gate valve sealing failure which were observed on pipelines used for transportation of light oil products (gasoline, kerosene, diesel fuel, etc.). The general causes of gate seating failure occur due to the lack of free movement (jamming) in the mounting seat of the shut-off valve body resulting from the presence of finely dispersed inclusions of corrosion products in «seat-body» detachable joints. The paper discusses the results of fault detection in gate valves with an identified gate sealing failure, the results of the analysis of design solutions, and also discusses and analyzes the factors which caused the identified failures. Based on analytical and experimental results described in the paper, measures were developed and implemented to prevent similar gate valve sealing failures in operation at oil product pipelines, including: developing a technology for cleaning mounting surfaces of valve bodies before mounting seats; bench testing of gate valves with protective coating applied in contact areas between the seats and the body; practical testing of the protective coating application technology in real-life operating conditions; replacing existing seats with upgraded ones including a spring pack providing higher pre-pressing of the seats to the gate during medium level repairs.
References
1. Voronov V.I., Flegentov I.A., Zadubrovskaya O.A., Zhevelev O.Yu., Research of metal of shut-off valve and pumping equipment parts after long-term operation
(In Russ.), Neftyanoe khozyaystvo = Oil Industry, 2019, no. 1, pp. 75–79, DOI: https://doi.org/10.24887/0028-2448-2019-1-75-79
2. Kazantsev M.N., Flegentov I.A., Zhevelev O.Yu., Kvasnyak V.B., Zhukov M.V., Measures for improving the protective qualities of wear-resistant metal coatings in shut-off valves slide gates (In Russ.), Nauka i tehnologii truboprovodnogo transporta nefti i nefteproduktov = Science & Technologies: Oil and Oil Products Pipeline Transportation, 2016, no. 5 (25), pp. 78–83.
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