Safety shutoff valve

A shutdown valve (also referred to as SDV or emergency shutdown valve, ESV, ESD, or ESDV; or safety shutoff valve) is an actuated valve designed to stop the flow of a hazardous fluid upon the detection of a dangerous event. This provides protection against possible harm to people, equipment or the environment.Shutdown valves form part of a safety instrumented system. The process of providing automated safety protection upon the detection of a hazardous event is called functional safety A shutdown valve (also referred to as SDV or emergency shutdown valve, ESV, ESD, or ESDV; or safety shutoff valve) is an actuated valve designed to stop the flow of a hazardous fluid upon the detection of a dangerous event. This provides protection against possible harm to people, equipment or the environment.Shutdown valves form part of a safety instrumented system. The process of providing automated safety protection upon the detection of a hazardous event is called functional safety Shutdown valves are primarily associated with the petroleum industry although other industries may also require this type of protection system. ESD valves are required by law on any equipment placed on an offshore drilling rig to prevent catastrophic events like the BP Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. A safety shutoff valve should be fail-safe, that is close upon failure of any element of the input control system (such as temperature controllers, steam pressure controllers), air pressure, fuel pressure, current from a flame detector, or current from other safety devices such as low water cutoff, and high pressure cutoff. For fluids, metal seated ball valves are used as shut-down valves (SDV's). Use of metal seated ball valves leads to overall lower costs when taking into account lost production and inventory, and valve repair costs resulting from the use of soft seated ball valves which have a lower initial cost. Straight-through flow valves, such as rotary-shaft ball valves, are typically high-recovery valves. High recovery valves are valves that lose little energy due to little flow turbulence. Flow paths are straight through. Rotary control valves, butterfly valve and ball valves are good examples. For air intake shut down, two distinct types are commonly utilized, i.e. butterfly valves and swing gate or guillotine valves. Because diesel engines ignite fuel using compression instead of an electronic ignition, shutting off the fuel source to a diesel engine will not necessarily stop the engine from running. When an external hydrocarbon, such as methane gas, is present in the atmosphere, it can be sucked into a diesel engine causing overspeed or over revving, potentially leading to a catastrophic failure and explosion. When actuated, ESD valves stop the flow of air and prevent these failures. As shutdown valves form part of a SIS it is necessary to operate the valve by means of an actuator. These actuators are normally fail safe fluid power type. Typical examples of these are: