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Power of Comparison

Vortex Orifice Gates vs. Alternatives

• Many alternative slide gates and butterfly valves rely on soft rubber seals which are directly exposed to the material flow stream. These seals rapidly erode or tear away in service. Others rely on bonnet packing, which can relax and allow material packing in the seals. These deficiencies promote leakage of materials and dusts past the gate and to atmosphere, in addition to actuation issues and several other maintenance concerns. The Vortex® Orifice Gate™addresses these issues by incorporating "live loaded" hard polymer pressure plate seals. Hard polymer provides greater wear resistance and longer service life than alternative sealing materials. The hard polymer seals are "live loaded" with compressed rubber backing to ensure even as the polymer experiences frictional wear from many actuations over time, the rubber load seals continuously force the polymer seals against the sliding blade. The seals are also shielded from the material flow stream, to protect them from abrasion. This design maintains the gate's positive seal of materials/dust-tight seal with infrequent maintenance intervention.

• Many alternative slide gates and butterfly valves have open cavities where materials can wedge and prevent positive material shut-off. Wedging can also create seal wear and material degradation, and can cause a gate to seize and bind. Wedged materials also create risk for cross-contamination and spoilage. To prevent wedging and ensure positive gate closure, the Orifice Gate’s sliding blade is designed to mechanically clear materials away from the sealing surfaces with each opening stroke. This ensures migrant materials are forced back out of theseals and are discharged into the process line, rather than packing in the seals and causing actuation issues.

• Many alternative slide gates allow metal-on-metal sliding, which creates galling. This causes agate to seize and bind, and can create foreign metal fragment contamination. The Orifice Gate's hard polymer seals eliminate metal-on-metal contact to resolve each of these concerns.

• A butterfly valve's rotating disc is directly exposed to the material flow steam, which creates wear to the disc itself. The exposed disc also disrupts convey line pressures and obstructs material flow as they pass through the valve, which can cause line plugs and other maintenance concerns. To resolve these issues, the Orifice Gate’s sliding blade is machined with an unobstructed, full-bore orifice that maintains convey line pressures and allows unrestricted material movement.

• If the pressure plate seals have partially worn and the compression load is lessened, slight dusting may be present through the weep holes at the front of the gate. With this maintenance indication, the Orifice Gate's shimming system can be utilized to restore the gate's dust-tight seal. Unlike alternative valves, which require spare parts be kept on-hand for seal maintenance, the Orifice Gate requires removal of parts. By simply loosening the nuts along the lateral aspectsof the gate, shim(s) can be removed from each side and the nuts retightened to restore the pressure plate seals' compression load. This maintenance process can be performed while thegate remains in-line, and can be repeated several times before the shims and pressure plate seals must be replaced.

• The Orifice Gate is designed with several replaceable parts, including actuator, sliding blade, clevis, pressure plate seals and shims, among others. If maintained and operated as recommended, these should be the gate's only wear parts. In several cases, this has allowed an Orifice Gate to remain in service for many years –and sometimes, even decades.