Safety Valves to Prevent Over Filling & Over Pressurising Silos

Valves for Powder Based Render Systems

A building supplier producing powder based render systems are now using AKO Pinch Valves as a safety mechanism to stop over filling and over pressurising in their silos. The Pinch Valves also ensure that the delivery drive blows into the correct silo.

The media passing through each valve and the number of cycles they run on different silos is as follows:

• Silo 1 – Longcliffe, 1 cycle per week.
• Silo 2 – White cement, 2 cycles per week.
• Silo 3 – Lime based stone, 6 cycles per week.
• Silo 4 – Hydrated lime, 1 cycle per week.
• Silo 5 – Grey cement, 2 cycles per week.
• Silo 6 – 2mm sand, 3 cycles per week.
• Silo 7 – Sand, 20 cycles per week.

These are subject to the company’s production schedule.

Pinch Valve used within this application – VF100.03X.31.30LA

VF model, air operated, bore sizes DN80 & DN100, aluminium body, aluminium flanges PN10/16 with mild steel bushings, natural rubber abrasion resistant sleeve.

Each of the above media is blown in at 1.5 bar. The safety valves to prevent over filling are normally closed, and open when 3 bar air pressure is supplied to the inlet of the valve body, which fully opens the rubber sleeve. There is no heated or cooled material, each different media is ambient temperature.

The Pinch Valves are positioned at the beginning of the line in an upright position.

AKO Pinch Valves Replace Alternative Manufacturer

There are 12 Pinch Valves (safety valves to prevent over filling) currently installed at this render storage and production site. The company were having new silos installed last year, and so decided to look at alternative valve suppliers since their current model of a pinch valve from another supplier was failing more often than they would like.

After trialing a sample Pinch Valve from AKO, the company confirmed that the quality of AKO’s product far outweighs the alternative pinch valve manufacturer/supplier and they decided to switch to using AKO products.

The company have been using pinch valves as safety valves to prevent over filling for four years, but they have only been using those supplied by AKO UK for a year. AKO UK’s pinch valves have been successfully working on delivery pipework for materials subject to wear such as sand. The head of  Maintenance Engineering told us that their satisfaction with the AKO Pinch Valve is good so far, and that they have not needed to replace any of the rubber sleeves as of yet.

The company were first advised to use pinch valves within the application because of their benefit to the employee health and safety.

They use a regulator and a pressure switch with the pinch valves.