Power of Comparison

Vortex Quick Clean Orifice Gate vs. Alternatives

The Vortex® Quick Clean Gate™ offers unique features and many distinct advantages over typical butterfly valves, pinch valves, ball valves and slide gates used in sanitary applications.

• Alternative slide gates and other valves can be problematic if they cannot be readily disassembled and sanitized. If materials collect in a valve's sealing surfaces, cross-contamination, spoilage and bacterial growth can result. The Quick Clean Gate’s ability to be “Cleaned out of Place” ensures product safety and quality.

• The Quick Clean Gate is specifically designed to accelerate the sanitation process, so that downtime is significantly reduced. The Quick Clean Gate’s compression coupling connections and its press-lock latches allow for quick disassembly, sanitation and reassembly without tools.

• Many alternative slide gates have open cavities where materials can lodge and prevent positive material shut-off. Lodging can also create seal wear and material degradation, and cause a gate to seize and bind. Lodged materials also create risk for cross-contamination and spoilage. To prevent lodging and ensure positive gate closure, such cavities have been eliminated in the Quick Clean Gate's design. The Quick Clean Gate is designed to mechanically clear materials away from the sealing surfaces with each opening stroke. This ensures migrant materials are forced back out of the seals and are discharged into the process line, rather than packing in the seals and causing actuation and/or contamination issues.

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

• Alternative slide gates and butterfly valves can significantly shear materials, as a result of jamming and grinding materials into the seals. Sheared materials cause seal wear, material degradation and damaged product quality. Sheared materials may also wedge in the seals, causing the gate to seize and bind. To address these issues, the Quick Clean Gate's "scissoring" action tapers off material flow throughout closure. In keeping the pressure plate seals clear of materials, their service life is also extended.