What is a Ball Valve?

The ball valve is a valve that uses a ball with a circular channel as the opening and closing part, and the ball rotates with the valve stem to realize the opening and closing action. The opening and closing part of the ball valve is a ball with a hole, which rotates around the axis perpendicular to the channel, so as to achieve the purpose of opening and closing the channel. Ball valves are mainly used to open and close pipelines and equipment media.

The ball valve is evolved from the plug valve. It has the same lifting action of rotating 90°, the difference is that the cock body is a sphere with a circular through hole or channel through its axis. The ratio of the spherical surface to the channel opening should be such that when the ball rotates 90°, all spherical surfaces should appear at the inlet and outlet, thereby truncating the flow. The ball valve can be closed tightly with only a 90° rotation operation and a small torque. The completely equal valve body cavity provides a low resistance, straight-through flow path for the medium.

Ball valves are most suitable for direct opening and closing, but recent developments have designed ball valves to allow them to throttle and control flow. The main feature of the ball valve is its compact structure, easy operation and maintenance, suitable for general working media such as water, solvent, acid and natural gas, and also suitable for media with harsh working conditions, such as oxygen, hydrogen peroxide, methane and ethylene. The ball valve body can be integral or combined.

Ball valve features

• The ball valve is not limited by the installation direction, and the flow direction of the medium can be arbitrary. The fluid resistance is small, and the full-bore ball valve basically has no flow resistance.
• The ball valve is simple in structure, relatively small in size, light in weight, and easy to maintain.
• Tight and reliable. It has two sealing surfaces, and various plastics are widely used for the sealing surface materials of the ball valve at present, which has good sealing performance and can achieve complete sealing. It has also been widely used in vacuum systems.
• The ball valve is suitable for frequent operation, opening and closing quickly and lightly. Easy to operate, quick to open and close, only need to rotate 90° from fully open to fully closed, which is convenient for long-distance control.
• The maintenance is convenient, the ball valve has a simple structure, the sealing ring is generally movable, and it is more convenient to disassemble and replace.
• The ball valve has good sealing performance. When fully open or fully closed, the sealing surfaces of the ball and the valve seat are isolated from the medium, and the sealing surface of the valve will not be eroded when the medium passes through.
• It has a wide range of applications, with diameters ranging from small to several millimeters to several meters, and can be applied from high vacuum to high pressure.
• Since the ball valve has wiping properties during the opening and closing process, it can be used in media with suspended solid particles.
• The ball valve has small fluid resistance, no vibration and low noise.