How to select ceramic valves

Duo to excellent chemical stability and extreme hardness of ceramic, ceramic valves are widely used for abrasive and corrosive water, oil, gas and slurry with abrasive solid in coal fired power plants, mining & metallurgy, iron & steel, paper & pulp, fertilizer, polysilicon, cement, Alumina plant and petrochemical industry.

There are many kinds of ceramic valves like ceramic ball valves, ceramic butterfly valves, ceramic knife gate valves, ceramic double disc gate valves, ceramic check valves, ceramic three-way valves etc.

And there are also different kinds of ceramic materials like Al2O3, ZrO2, Si3N4 etc.
How to select suitable ceramic valves with proper materials for different working conditions and control requirements?

First we need to know the different functions and performance of these ceramic valves.

The ceramic ball valves are fully lining with ceramic, so the ceramic ball valves can be suitable for both abrasive and corrosive medium include slurry and  solid powder. And the sealing face of the ceramic ball valve is spherical ceramic to ceramic seal, the leakage class can reach Class VI according to ANSI/FCI 70-2. So the ceramic ball valves are suitable for various abrasive and corrosive applications which also need excellent sealing performance like mining slurry in mining & metallurgy, limestone in coal fired power plants and steel mills, alumina powder in Alumina plant, cathode material for lithium battery, silicon particle in polysilicon industry etc.

The ceramic ball valves have O-port ball and V-port ball for choice.
When regulating function is needed, the ball is V-port.
When only on-off function needed, the ball is O-port.

When the medium is abrasive but not corrosive, the body of valve can be without ceramic lining to save the valve cost.

Then we have choices to use ceramic butterfly valves or ceramic knife gate valves. They all have body seat and disc sealing ring in material of ceramic to be wear resistant against abrasive medium. But the body and center of disc is not lining with ceramic. So if the medium is corrosive, the body and disc should be in material of stainless steel, duplex stainless steel or special alloy to be corrosion resistant against different corrosive medium.

The ceramic knife gate valves are mostly used in applications which don't require good sealing like fly ash and limestone in coal-fired power plants. 
According to customer's requirements, we also design high performance ceramic knife gate valves with zero leakage for mining slurry.
The ceramic butterfly valves can be used as regulating valve with good sealing performance.

The ceramic double disc gate valves are used widely in coal-fired power plants as feeding valve or discharge valves. The body are lining with ceramic and the disc sealing ring and seat are also in material of ceramic. But the center of the disc is not lining with ceramic.
The sealing performance is good but only under 0.6MPA working pressure.

The ceramic check valves are used to avoid backflow.
And the ceramic three way valves are used to divert the flow.

After select the correct type of ceramic valves, we still need to select the suitable ceramic materials. Al2O3 is used as seat material duo to higher hardness and ZrO2 is used as ball material duo to high flexual strength. And Si3N4 is used for higher working temperature duo higher thermal shock resistance.

According to different working conditions and control requirements, YFL engineers will choose the suitable ceramic materials for  correct ceramic valves.

The ceramic valves operation can be manual, pneumatic or electric according to control requirements and power supply at project site.

Should you have any question and support needed, please contact YFL for best solutions to solve abrasion & corrosion problems and create values for your projects.