How Do You Choose the Right Butterfly Valve?
Choosing the right butterfly valve for your piping is essential to achieving long-lasting performance, safety and cost effectiveness. So what makes for the best choice with all the different designs and materials to choose from a Wafer Butterfly Valve to a Double Flanged Butterfly Valve? You want to learn the difference and make the best selection according to the pressure class, the way it’s installed, the medium used, and how much it requires from you concerning maintenance.
Among the most frequently used options is the Wafer Butterfly Valve. It is compact, lightweight and economical, and is bolted between two pipe flanges for installation (use of long bolts). But "wafer" style valves should never be used in dead-end service unless they are rated for dead-end service. In contrast to this has a Lug Type Butterfly Valve with the threaded inserts – lugs that enable to be mounted in each flange with separate set of bolts. This feature makes the lug type valve perfect for applications where you want to isolate one side without affecting the other – great for end-of-the-line scenarios.
When higher performance strength and durability are needed, the Flange Type Butterfly Valve offers good concentricity and stability in installation. Variants of the Ductile Iron Flange Type Butterfly Valve is many times stronger and more resilient than the hardened cast iron and is ideal for water treatment, HVAC and industrial piping systems. When it comes to corrosive applications, the Stainless Steel Flange Butterfly Valve ensures exceptional chemical and high temperature resistance, whereas the Manual Flange Type Butterfly Valve still makes good sense for simple on-off operations without too much of actuation.
The Grooved Type Butterfly Valve is usually chosen in fire protection and mechanical room for ease of installation with grooved end fittings. Ductile Iron Grooved type butterfly valve ASTM A536 products such as this are designed to meet aggressive material requirements for ductility and elongation and provide high reliability during pressure surges. Also the Handle grooved end butterfly valve is simple in design and sturdy in construction for manuall use in confined area. For further protection against abrasion and corrosion, select the Rubber Coated Grooved Type Butterfly Valve which increases longevity in slurry or wastewater applications.
Lined and coated valves are required when processing aggressive media. Advanced Options are available for the Lined Butterfly Valve family. A Pinless PTFE Lined butterfly valve eliminates dead legs and crevice corrosion by removing the stem pin. If you are looking for the best in chemical resistance, don't go past the Halar Lined Pinless Butterfly Valve, the ideal choice in pharmaceutical and high-purity chemical processing. Similarly, the Rubber Lined Pinless Butterfly Valve also has excellent sealing and is very resilient to abrasive and soft acidic service.
There are more specialized configurations available for certain applications. The Pinless Lug Type Butterfly Valve provides better safety and hygiene without exposed pins which may rust or trap media. With superior resistance to chloride stress corrosion cracking the Duplex Type Pinless Butterfly Valve is the ideal choice in marine and offshore applications. The Cast Iron Lug Butterfly Valve is the best choice for general utility services and continues to be the industry’s cost-effective workhorse valve for general purpose applications.
Lastly, the Double Flanged Butterfly Valve is typically desired for application in large-bore pipelines and for high-pressure systems. The double-flange design provides perfect stability and better installation, especially for pump station and power plant.
In short, selecting the suitable butterfly valve begins with knowing the pressure, temperature, media and installation limitations of your system. From the simplicity of a Wafer Butterfly Valve, the chemical resistance of a Halar Lined Pinless Butterfly Valve to the strength of a Ductile Iron Flange Type Butterfly Valve, selecting the valve that best suits your application will maximize performance and minimize the cost of ownership.