Industrial valves come in all different shapes and sizes to fit into pipelines and process lines. Different valve types have different mechanisms for controlling the flow of fluids—whether water and steam, food and beverage products, or even highly corrosive chemicals—such as ball mechanisms, sliding gates, or disks that provide tight seals.
As you can imagine, different types of valves are built for different industrial applications, but with so many unique valve designs out there, choosing the right one for your project can be enough to make your head spin. Each design has its own unique capabilities, features, advantages, and disadvantages. Lining up all those factors with your project’s intended application can make or break it.
If the valve you choose isn’t built to handle thick, viscous, or chunky slurries found in food and beverage or petrochemical facilities, for example, the pipeline you’re building won’t be as efficient or reliable as it should be! Choosing the right valve types for your industry or application is as important as choosing its material composition. Fortunately, we’re here to guide you through the wide world of different kinds of valves and help you make that critical decision with confidence.
Read on to dive deeper into ball valves, gate valves, and butterfly valves and find out how they work and where they work best:
Ball Valves
First off in our glossary of types of valves, we have the ball valve. These valves have a ball inside the valve body with a hole running through its center. When the valve is closed, the ball sits tight against its seat and blocks the flow of fluid through the pipeline. However, when the valve opens, the ball rotates 90 degrees, aligning its hole with the direction of flow and letting fluid pass through.
Advantages of Ball Valves
- Quick and easy operation
- Reliable flow control and sealing
- Durable, low-maintenance designs
- High temperature/pressure applications
- Positive shut-off
Disadvantages of Ball Valves
- Not ideal for partial flow control or throttling
- Not suited for tight spaces
- More expensive than some other valve types
Ball Valve Applications
Ball valves find use across a wide range of industries. Due to their suitability for high pressure and temperature and their ease of operation, these types of valve can handle applications such as:
- Steam and water flow control for boilers, turbines, and cooling systems
- Production and packaging processes for food and beverage plants
- Smooth, responsive flow control and shut-off for HVAC systems
Gate Valves
A gate either lets you in or it doesn’t—there’s no middle ground. Gate valves work the same way, using a flat or wedge-shaped disk that moves up or down to fully open or fully block the flow path through your pipeline. While this valve type doesn’t have any capabilities for throttling or reducing the flow of fluids, its excellent sealing properties make it easy to go from full flow to no flow.
Advantages of Gate Valves
- Excellent sealing properties with minimal pressure drop
- High-temperature and high-pressure reliability
- Good for straight-line flow and shut-off
Disadvantages of Gate Valves
- Slow to operate
- Not suitable for throttling
Gate Valve Applications
Gate valves come in many types, such as rising stem gate valves, which feature a highly visible stem to indicate when the gate is open or closed; knife gate valves, which cut easily through slurries or viscous fluids; and check valves, which automatically shut down valves at the first sign of backflow.
These types of valves often see use in:
- Shut-off systems in oil and gas pipelines and refineries
- Sturdy, resilient flow control for slurries, ores, and tailings in mining processing pipelines
- Processes for treating and managing water and wastewater
Butterfly Valves
Last but not least in our exploration of different types of valves, we move on to butterfly valves. Butterfly valves are extremely reliable and versatile, thanks to their use of a disk attached to a stem. Like with ball valves, rotating the disk opens or closes the valve. Unlike ball valves or gate valves, though, butterfly valves work well when partially open or closed, allowing for flow throttling.
Advantages of Butterfly Valves
- Compact, lightweight, cost-effective design
- Quick, easy operation with a 90-degree turn
- Suitable for flow throttling and regulation, not just shutoff
- Low pressure drop
- Easy maintenance
Disadvantages of Butterfly Valves
- Less effective sealing
- Prone to pressure drop, even when fully open
- Less suitable for high-pressure applications
Butterfly Valve Applications
While this valve type isn’t as well suited to handling fluids under high pressure, its versatile design makes it useful for all different sorts of fluids, including liquids, viscous slurries, gases and steam, or even fine powders.
- Regulating and isolating large volumes of water through water treatment systems
- Managing air and water flow in HVAC systems
- Handling low-pressure fluids in oil and gas pipelines
- Processing diverse food and beverage products
Find the Right Type of Valve with American Stainless
You wouldn’t want to use a butterfly valve where the high-pressure shutoff capabilities of a gate valve would be a better option. Likewise, you wouldn’t want to use a gate valve in part of a pipeline that calls for more granular flow throttling and regulation capabilities. With so many different kinds of valves, even within these three categories, choosing the right one can feel daunting.
5 Tips for Choosing the Right Industrial Valve Type
- Consider whether this is a high-pressure or low-pressure application. A butterfly valve might suit low-pressure systems, but not fluids under high pressure.
- How much flow control do you need? Gate valves and ball valves are best for full shutoff, while butterfly valves provide more granular regulation.
- Keep weight and space constraints in mind. Stemless gate valves and butterfly valves are usually more compact and lighter than other types of gate valves or ball valves.
- Assess maintenance and durability requirements. Gate valves tend to be more high-maintenance than other types of valves, since their mechanisms can wear out faster.
- Account for your budget constraints. Butterfly valves are usually more cost-effective for large-diameter pipelines, while ball valves could offer longer-term cost savings for higher-pressure pipelines.
If you’re still not sure, American Stainless can help you figure it out. We aren’t just a valve supplier. We also help mechanical contractors and pipe fabricators choose the best materials and valve types for their project. Whatever your project’s industrial application and operating environment, we have the experience in the US Southeast’s major industries to point you in the right direction and stock you with the best valves for the job. Contact us or request pricing here.