Safety Pressure Relief Valves

Systems designed for the containment and or transfer of fluids or gases are often subjected to increased pressure. Such systems commonly include pressure control/relief valves to ensure that pressures do not exceed safe working limits as designed. Safety relief valves are manufactured worldwide and are typically specified to control/relieve at a nominal pressure. Manufacturers of relief valves would be required to test and certify the operating pressure of a valve and most manufacturers will offer valves across a wide range of pressures and bores depending on the customer requirement.

Valve Functionality Testing

Single and double acting changeover valves, when required to start, stop and alter airflow direction within an application must be verified during manufacture to ensure the media is not allowed to flow in the undesired path, nor escape to the environment the valve is being used in.

Valves are typically built and then tested manually by an operator using valve isolators, pilots and the monitoring of pressure / flow gauges before deciding upon the valves acceptance. This not only results in a labouring and repetitive task, but one that is susceptible to human error due to the complex pneumatics.

Furness Controls designed a bespoke FCS539 valve control box specific for the customers application of leak and function testing of 5/2 and 3/2 air valves. The FCS539 used in conjunction with our versatile microcontroller based Leak Detector, resulted in consistent leak testing which allowed an assembled valve to be automatically tested in parallel whilst the next was being built and thus doubling product throughput.