From swing check valves to lift and ball check valves, American Stainless connects you to high-quality, durable, reliable non-return valves to protect your pipe systems from backflow.
Get the Right Valve to Prevent Backflow
Backflow—one of your piping system’s worst enemies. Ideally, fluid would always flow through your pipes in one direction, but back siphonage and back pressure can cause the flow to reverse. For plumbing and water/wastewater treatment systems, this can allow pollutants, chemicals, or bacteria to contaminate potable water and cause health risks. In other industries, backflow can impact product quality or safety, cause environmental harm, damage equipment, or pose serious health and safety risks to workers.
American Stainless provides a wide range of check valves, including swing check valves, lift check valves, and dual plate check valves, sourced from leading manufacturers to prevent backflow in your pipe systems and ensure safe, reliable operations.
What Is a Check Valve?
A check valve, also known as a non-return valve, is an automatic, self-acting valve that allows liquids and gases to flow in one direction and one direction only—it detects the flow through your pipes, and at the moment the flow reverses, the check valve automatically kicks in and promptly closes to prevent backflow. Check valves are an essential safety feature in pipe systems.
Preventing Backflow
Check valves minimize the reverse flow of fluids, including liquids and gases, in your pipe systems, preventing damage to your equipment, keeping your processes running smoothly, preventing contamination in your products, and ensuring worker and product safety.
Minimizing Water Hammer
Sudden changes in fluid flow can cause water hammer, a hydraulic shock that can cause pipe damage, disruptive noise and vibrations, process disruptions, and deterioration of piping systems over time. The use of check valves mitigates water hammer and helps you maintain longevity of your pipe systems.
Protecting Downstream Equipment
Pumps, compressors, meters, control valves, and other process equipment in your pipe infrastructure can be damaged by backflow and water hammer, making check valves essential in preventing damage to your equipment, saving on the cost of repair and maintenance, and extending your equipment lifespan.
Selecting the Right Check Valve Types for Your Pipes
Pipe systems come in all shapes and sizes, and so do check valves. Various industrial applications have their own requirements and demands for reliable non-return valves, necessitating a wide variety of check valve types to hold up to various pressures, temperatures, pipe diameters, and other constraints and considerations.
Swing Check Valves
By utilizing a hinged disc that swings open and closed, swing check valves provide minimal pressure drop and are widely used in wastewater systems, HVAC systems, chemical processing, and various other manufacturing and industrial processes.
Dual Plate Check Valves
Featuring a compact design, dual plate check valves use two spring-loaded plates to swiftly open and close in response to fluid flow. Their rapid response makes them ideal for oil and gas, petrochemical, and water distribution systems.
Sanitary Check Valves
The food and beverage industry, pharmaceuticals, and chemical processing make use of sanitary check valves, which are designed exclusively for use with liquids and provide cost-effective, versatile, and easily-operated backflow prevention.
Ball Check Valves
Certain check valves use a spherical ball, held in place by a seat or O-ring in the valve body, to create a seal when backflow is detected. Ball check valves minimize water hammer and pressure surges due to their rapid closing action and are easy to maintain and prepare.
American Stainless provides the check valves you need, when you need them.
Industrial Applications of Check Valves
Across a wide range of industries, the ability to quickly and automatically shut down a valve at the first sign of backflow is essential to smooth, safe operations and high-quality products and processes.
Oil and Gas
Pipelines, refineries, and processing plants require unidirectional flow of high-pressure fluids, requiring check valves that can handle high temperatures and corrosive environments.
Water/Wastewater Treatment
Check valves perform vital work preventing backflow in water transport and wastewater treatment facilities, ensuring that contaminants such as chemicals and bacteria do not enter the water supply.
Power Generation
Check valves built to withstand high pressures and temperatures in power plants ensures that cooling fluid, steam, and other transport processes maintain high system efficiency and prevent outages and downtime.
Chemical Processing
Check valves designed to withstand corrosive environments and handle a wide range of chemical compounds prevent potentially hazardous substances from backflow and causing harm to personnel, equipment, and the environment.
Manufacturing
Pipelines, cooling systems, and hydraulic systems for industrial equipment help maintain process efficiency and equipment integrity throughout various manufacturing and industrial processes.
HVAC Systems
Check valves in heating, ventilation, and cooling systems regulate the flow of heating and cooling fluids to contribute to efficient temperature control.
How to Choose the Right Check Valve Types
Whether swing check valve or lift valve or any other type of non-return valve, selecting the right valve for your unique applications depends on a lot more than choosing the right type.
The wrong type or design of check valve for your industrial environment and your unique needs might not deliver the performance you need when you need it. From flow rate to pressure and temperature to the diameters and end connections of your pipe systems to industry standards, American Stainless is here to help you evaluate your choices of check valves carefully and pick the right valve for your needs.
Flow Rate
Your choice of check valve type, model, and material should align with the maximum flow rate of your system, to ensure your valves can handle the anticipated fluid volume and kick in at the first sign of backflow.
Pressure and Temperature Rating
Each model and make will have its own pressure and temperature rating, based on its design, type, and material composition. The maximum operational pressures and temperatures in your flow control system should not exceed your check valve pressure and temperature rating.
Material and Media Compatibility
Your check valve materials need to be compatible with the fluids running through your flow control system to avoid corrosion or contamination. For example, when working with hazardous chemicals in a high-pressure and high-temperature environment, you would want to choose stainless steel over thermoplastics.
End Connection Compatibility
To prevent leaks and ensure reliable performance, your check valves need to match up with your pipes not only in terms of pipe and valve diameter, but in terms of end connections such as threaded, flanged, or welded connections.
Industry Standards
Your industry is likely to have its own set of stringent standards for process quality and safety, such as API, ANSI, and ISO standards. Make certain your choice in check valves aligns with your responsibility to adhere to these standards.
Prevent Backflow with American Stainless Check Valves
Backflow is a serious problem in industrial flow control, regardless of your industry, and the right choice of check valves, from swing check valves to lift check valves to every other type of non-return valve, is essential to preventing backflow, minimizing serious issues like water hammer, and ensuring safety and quality in your industrial processes.
Serving manufacturing contractors and industrial customers across a vast breadth of sectors, American Stainless provides top-quality check valves from the best valve manufacturers. We hold ourselves to the highest possible quality standards in order fulfillment, ensuring attentive service and on-time, accurate shipments so you can get right to work with the products you need as soon as possible.
Contact us to get started today.