Oxford Flow, flow control equipment specialist for oil, gas, industrial process and water industries, has been awarded the Albert (Al) Woelfel Best Mechanical Engineering Achievement (BMEA) Award by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) at OTC (Houston) for its ES axial flow valve.
The Woelfel BMEA Award recognizes a product, device, or system which best reflects innovation or practical use of mechanical engineering in solving problems, improving design, or maximizing performance. Chosen by an executive committee, Oxford Flow is the first company to win the award since 2019.
Oxford Flow’s ES axial flow valve, which has been designed with no mechanical actuator, stem, or drive train, is proven to eliminate fugitive emissions, significantly increase reliability and is considerably smaller and lighter than existing valves on the market.
Dr Chris Kennell, Technical Sales Manager at Oxford Flow, was one of a team of engineers who designed and developed the ES valve. Speaking about the award win, Kennell said: “Up until recently, the valve industry has only brought forward iterative engineering design improvements with no major changes to the classic valve blueprint. However, given that the most common failure points of valves are the stem and actuator mechanical linkage. Without reimagining the design, operators remain trapped in a cycle of spending millions in maintenance to prevent leaks, causing significant safety risks or impacted the environment.
“The ES valve was designed with the intention of solving an industry problem, creating something that was not only easy to retrofit into existing systems, but that would provide assurance to operators to know that their operations are now safer and more environmentally sound.”
The ES valve is certified to ISO 15848-1 Class A and provides notable assurances of leak elimination in comparison to the standard Class B certification, which is typically seen across the industry.
Courtesy of Oxford Flow.