Three-way And Four-way Ball Valve

A Ball Valve is a valve with a spherical disc, the part of the valve that controls the flow through it. The sphere has a hole, or port, through the middle so that when the port is in line with both ends of the valve, flow will occur. When the valve is closed, the hole is perpendicular to the ends of the valve, and flow is blocked. The handle or lever will be inline with the port position letting to see the valve's position. The ball valve, along with the butterfly valve and plug valve, are part of the family of quarter turn valves.

Ball valves are durable and usually work to achieve perfect shutoff even after years of disuse. They are therefore an excellent choice for shutoff applications (and are often preferred to globe valves and gate valves for this purpose). They do not offer the fine control that may be necessary in throttling applications but are sometimes used for this purpose.

Ball valves are used extensively in industry because they are very versatile, supporting pressures up to 700 bars and temperatures up to 200°C. Sizes typically range from 0.5 cm to 30 cm. They are easy to repair and operate.

There are five general body styles of ball valves: single body, three piece body, split body, top entry, and welded. The difference is based on how the pieces of the valve—especially the casing that contains the ball itself—are manufactured and assembled. The valve operation is the same in each case.

Three-way ball valves have an L- or T-shaped hole through the middle. The different combinations of flow are shown in the figure. It is easy to see that a T valve can connect any pair of ports, or all three, together, but the 45 degree position which might disconnect all three leaves no margin for error. The L valve can connect the centre port to either side port, or disconnect all three, but it cannot connect the side ports together.

Multi-port ball valves with 4 ways, or more, are also commercially available, the inlet way often being orthogonal to the plane of the outlets. For special applications, such as driving air-powered motors from forward to reverse, the operation is performed by rotating a single lever 4-way ball valve. The 4-way valve has two L-shaped ports in the ball that do not interconnect, sometimes referred to as an "×" port.

By: varalakshmi

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The author is associated with IPFonline

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