The Effectiveness Of Your Control Loops

The efficiency of your plant is directly related to the accuracy of your control loops.

Do you know how much a control loop in your factory can cost?
 

A control loop consists of 3 elements;  a transmitter, a PID controller – its I/O and a control valve (valves – actuator – positioner). Made up of its three elements, a control loop can cost from $10,000 to $40,000 distributed as follows: $1,000 to $5,000 for the transmitter, $1,000 to $2,000 for the controller and $2,500 to $10,000 for the valve.

The accuracy of the transmitter and controller are known is usually: 0.1% for the transmitter – 0.004% for the controller.  For the valve, however, accuracy will depend on a number of variables.

• Process area
• Noise
• Pressure
• Temperature
• Corrosion
• Controllability
• Life-cycle
• Cavitation risk
• Environmental impact
• etc.

Since there is no valve to fill all applications, careful selection must be made to ensure the optimization of your control loops and of your production!

Choosing the right type of valve for your application is essential to ensure the optimization of your installations. There are several types of valves and each has its own specific characteristics here are a few:

• Globe Valve: Cavitation resistant and noise-reducing, this valve type is perfect for applications with a large pressure differential.
• Segmented ball valve: The economical solution to achieve high capacity with a lower nominal valve size.
• Rotating plug valve: A safe solution for your general applications and even more aggressive applications.
• Butterfly valve: lightweight, it is the economical solution for valves of large diameters. Typically, it offers a high flow capacity and excellent emission performances.

It is important not to select & size a valve using only the normal operations values, you must also use the minimum and maximum values of the process and flow to be sure that the chosen valve works perfectly. when it’s time to increase or decrease your plant’s production periodically.

A good selection and sizing of your control valves has a direct impact on your present & future production capacity.

In order to correctly size and select your valves, you will need to carefully collect their service conditions:

Link to the application form: Application Form