An engineering firm reached out to Valin to help support a major California refinery during its turnaround process. During the course of their work, the engineering firm discovered the refinery needed new emergency safety shut-off valves (also known as chopper valves) as part of their regeneration process. At this point, the firm reached out to our team for guidance, so we held a strategic session with all interested parties.
We concluded that the refinery would be best served with process valves for its chopper valve application. Needing redundant solenoid valves to pilot them, chopper valves can have a much higher rate of failure if not designed properly. There can be an increased risk of explosions, which, in turn, increase the likelihood of safety concerns or an unplanned shutdown.
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To avoid this issue, the valves must be periodically tested to ensure that stiction does not turn into a failure-inducing problem. The only way to test these valves, however, is to bring it through a single cycle. And the only way to do that is to take the SIS offline. This exercise can often make operators cringe, as it inevitably causes costly downtime. To mediate this concern, the solution devised was to add a second solenoid valve to the design. This allows us to test each individually and the controller can be programmed to run tests both periodically and automatically.
To meet the customer’s needs, we assembled a valve package that included a proprietary redundant control system. It is the only pilot valve system that does not contain a single point of failure that would result in an unanticipated closure of the process valve. The system achieves a higher level of both process safety and reliability. By integrating two solenoid valves into the SIS, the refinery ensured enhanced safety and operational reliability, safeguarding both its equipment and personnel.
We broke down all of our work with this customer in an article published last year by Hydrocarbon Processing Magazine. We go over contributions to this project in a bit more detail and outline how we were able to add third party Class 1 Div. 2, Group B, C and D certifications on the solution. Click here to read the full article.