British Salt, the UK’s leading manufacturer of pure dried vacuum salt products, approached Sofis partner Avenium to help solve a problem with their manual valve operations.
The problem
The facility is equipped with two steam turbines, each with two valves on the exhaust discharge. Each turbine has a fixed actuated valve and a 20” NB bevel gear valve connected to an extended spindle. Operating the manual valves was complex, often taking up to 20 minutes to fully open or close. During turbine changeovers, one valve must be fully opened before the corresponding valve on the opposite stream is fully closed. This manual process of actuating the valves during turbine changeover could take up to one hour of continuous operation.
Solution assessment by British Salt
British Salt enquired about installing an actuation device to allow the valves to be opened and closed quickly. The plant already has a fixed actuator on one of its valves. However, this was expensive to install and is difficult to operate at times when their operators have to work the valve manually. As the customer comments: “Each turbine has two exhaust valves. One of the two is fitted with an actuator. This is expensive and cannot be easily hand operated in the case of a malfunction”. The Mechanical Engineer at British Salt came across the Sofis EasiDrive solution in a Health & Safety journal.
The solution
EasiDrive was put forward by Sofis partner Avenium, as a compact and agile solution to open and close valves effortlessly. The portable actuator provides safe and easy actuation of manual valves that are difficult to operate manually. Manually operating such valves sometimes results in injury through repetitive strain by an operator. The custom-made reaction kit absorbs any potential kick that may be produced once the valve reaches its open or closed limits, making it a safe and simple solution for operators. EasiDrive is versatile and can be powered pneumatically or by electricity. A torque of up to 950NM can be generated, depending on the client’s choice of tool.
Positive feedback
The customer’s experience with EasiDrive is very positive: “We fitted the EasiDrive brackets to the valves and have found that the EasiDrive is far more effective than we had expected. It is still early days, but the solution looks good and there are no complaints from our operators”!