Comment by BVAA CEO Rob Bartlett

Or perhaps phrased also as ‘invest thousands, save millions.’

This week I was engaged on a BVAA Training course, basking in the warmth and experience of a control valve guru of some 55 years’ experience, Mr David Martin.

As part of his Control Valve course, Dave shares many of his lifetime’s experiences, often through the telling of anecdotes. A memorable one for me, as root cause analysis is a particular hobby-horse of mine, concerns the lengths a valve user went to, to try and overcome an easily resolvable – indeed avoidable - issue.

The problem need never have occurred had the user sought, and later on listened, to advice from a real valve expert.  Or indeed adhered to some basic industry good practice in the first place.

It involved a large and extremely noisy control valve on a plant. The noise was indeed unbearable, and the neighbours nearby complained vociferously.  Instead of addressing the root cause, the plant owner chose first to try and mitigate the impacts, and ‘invested’ a huge amount of money in building both a sound wall and providing the neighbour with sound-proof glazing. This allegedly ran to millions of pounds.

Unhappy at being hermetically sealed in, the neighbours perhaps understandably continued to complain. The plant was apparently in real danger of being closed down.

Eventually real valve-expert advice was sought, and the diagnosis was clear – phenomenal cavitation caused and then exacerbated by piping layout errors.  The errant valve was mounted immediately adjacent to a tee-piece - control valves should be installed with straight lengths of pipe both upstream and downstream, ideally to a length of 6 to 8 pipe diameters. 

Changing the valve’s location was initially resisted, and a noise reducing trim was recommended, installed, and the issue largely resolved. At considerably less cost than the mitigation!

Another issue then investigated by the experts had been the burning out of the problem valve’s actuator. The mystified operator reported an expectation of a few cycles a day.  When interrogated, the actuator’s on-board data logger (regrettably an often under-utilised but extremely helpful feature) revealed a cycle every second!

The moral really is to know and adhere to industry good practice, understand your process, seek expert advice early, and utilise the tools the manufacturer provides. That and root cause analysis of course!

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