Victaulic, a leading manufacturer of mechanical pipe-joining systems, recently announced the launch of the Series 795 Knife Gate Valve, the industry’s first in-line maintenance knife gate valve. The new valve simplifies installation and maintenance, reduces downtime and improves worker safety.
The Series 795 Knife Gate Valve is ideal for fluid lines containing solids or abrasive materials common in wastewater treatment, hydroelectric power generation, mining and other industrial settings with applications such as lines for slurry and tailings or cyclones. It alleviates a long-standing industry pain point: the time-consuming, labor-intensive process of removing the entire valve from the pipeline to facilitate maintenance, rebuilding and repair.
The new valve’s innovative design can reduce maintenance downtime by up to 95 percent and generate up to 60 percent savings in annual maintenance costs. Victaulic developed advanced technology that encloses all wear parts into a single seat cartridge kit, which greatly simplifies maintenance. The design allows the valve to remain installed through ongoing maintenance cycles. In fact, one Montana mining company beta testing the Series 795 saw maintenance that once required hours of downtime reduced to minutes.
The new valve improves worker safety, because only one component has to be replaced versus removing the entire valve from the pipeline. This first-of-its-kind, revolutionary design eliminates the need for rigging with heavy chains and pulleys swinging over the heads of maintenance crews.