A company producing colostomy bags have started to use AKO Pinch Valves within their medical environment. Colostomy bags are used to collect the waste that would normally pass through a human body, by attaching them to one end of the large intestine during surgery.
2 of AKO Pinch Valves were trialed successfully within the application, with a further 4 Pinch Valves to follow due to the incredibly reliable response.
Media: Soft backing material, similar to very thin cloth. A 90cm diameter disc of this material is waste which is what passes though the pinch valve.
Temperature: Ambient
Pressure of media: A vacuum is used to pull the waste through the pinch valves.
The pinch valves are normally closed and a switch is used to open/close the vaves.
Amount of pressure being used to shut off the pinch valves: 2 bar
Amount of cycles per day: 16000
VMC model, air operated, aluminium body, stainless steel weld-on ends, natural rubber sleeve.
The medical company have been using AKO Pinch Valves so far, for 6 months. They initially trialed 2 units to replace existing knife gate valves that were installed on site. After the trial, the company were extremely pleased with the results from the Pinch Valves for the soft material and so ordered a further 4 units to replace more gate valves.
The medium would become trapped under the gate in the gate valves, causing the other valves following in line to do the same. This caused a strip down of the whole line, occurring too much downtime.
See more information on Pinch Valves vs Gate Valves.
The company were very happy when they discovered AKO Pinch Valves as there are no mechanical parts to trap the waste media. With the sleeve being the only wearable part, the Pinch Valve has an overall better total cost of ownership, in comparison to gate valves.
See more advantages of the pinch valve.
Spare natural rubber sleeves (product code M050-03X) are being kept on the shelf by this company in case of any failures with the valves for soft material, but a failure seems very unlikely any time soon since the media is not abrasive.
