No more crying over spilt product
Not only does product spillage cause financial losses, it can create a dusty, unhealthy and dangerous working environment, particularly where manual bagging or container filling is involved.
Not only does product spillage cause financial losses, it can create a dusty, unhealthy and dangerous working environment, particularly where manual bagging or container filling is involved.
When handling fine or cohesive materials, a major cause of leakage or spillage is slide or butterfly valves that stick or jam in operation, thereby preventing shut-off of product flow and causing containers to be over-filled.
The main cause of such a failing is the function of the blade of a slide valve passing through the material flow. As the blade passes through the product, material is carried by the blade and creates ingress of product into the runners or slide guides of the valve. This material will continue to build up until the valve can no longer close. The added disadvantage of slide valves and butterfly valves is that should a foreign object or hard lump of product become jammed in the blade, product flow cannot be stopped.
A possible solution to these problems is the Mucon iris diaphragm valve. A flexible tube of material is fixed rigidly at each end and held in a mechanism that rotates through 180°. When twisted the tube closes completely, creating a diaphragm that visually resembles that of a camera iris. This method of operation allows concentric closure of the iris and hence a high degree of flow control.
No mechanical parts of the valve come in to contact with the product as the diaphragm isolates them, meaning that there is no danger of the valve jamming or seizing up, and unlike side or butterfly valves, the flexible diaphragm of the Mucon iris diaphragm valve will close around solid objects and stop product flow.