CAB 3013 CHEMICAL PROCESS DYNAMICS AND CONTROL CONTROL VALVE CHARACTERISTICS

GROUP A2 ADNIN ITRIAH BINTI ROSLI FAZLEE BIN FELIX MUEZ BIN RAZAMI NURUL HAMIZAH BINTI ROHAIZAB
11931 12041 12166

11853

INTRODUCTION

Control valves are basically valves that are used to control a variable in a particular system, like temperature, pressure or flow. They are generally found in systems that incorporate pipes, regardless of their complexity. The valves operate by opening or closing either partially or completely in response to a deviation in the variables conditions from its normal conditions, or better known as a setpoint. In most operation plants, the changes are sent as a signal (usually electrical) from the transmitter to the controller, where the signal is received, processed and analyzed before sending the resulting control signal to the valves themselves. From a major oil refinery to the waterworks for a small domestic house, control valves are very important in the lives of many people in the modern world. There are various types of control valves available today, with each one having a different specification and application. However, these valves have been categorized according to their characteristics, one of them being their response after receiving a signal from the controller. In this case, there are three more common types, namely the linear, equal percentage and the quick opening valves. A linear valve allows flow linearly with the valve travel, i.e. opening the valve by 20% allows a 20% maximum flow. On the other hand, the equal percentage valve operates by changing the current existing flow by an equal percentage to the percentage of the valve travel. Finally, a quick opening valve allows a large change in flow with a small change in valve travel, i.e. allowing an 80% maximum flow by opening the valve by 20%. In this experiment, the main objective is to study the effects of changing the opening each valve to the flow rate and pressure drop for a flow of water across a pipeline. The equipment is connected such that the three valves are connected in parallel from a pump to the process tank. Any one of the three pipelines can be switched off or on at a given time, and the valve in study is regulated using the PID controller. Flowmeters are connected to each pipeline so that any changes in both the flow rate and the pressure drop can be seen and recorded. The opening of each valve (or the stroke percentage) is changed from 0% to 100% and back to 0% in 25% increments. Then, a graph of flow rate and pressure drop against the stroke opening can be plotted for each valve.

THEORY
Theoretically, the relationship between valve opening and flow rate percentage for linear, equal percentage and quick opening control valve can be seen in the graph below.

Figure 2:

relationship between stoke percentage (valve opening) with flow rate percentage
% of rate travel is stoke opening and % of Max. Flow is flow rate percentage. The characteristic of curve for all the control valves are different because of their designing in valve plug. Figure below shows the variation in designing the valve plug.

Figure 3: Variation in designing of valve plug METHODOLOGY

The corresponding hand valves are opened or closed so that only one valve is connected to the pump, in this case, the linear valve.

The pump is started and time is given for the flow to stabilize. The stroke percentage is set to 0%. The pressure drop and the flow rate across the pipe are recorded.

This step is repeated for stroke percentages of 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% (or the maximum value), and is again repeated for decreasing stroke percentages of 75%, 50%, 25% and 0%.

All the above steps are The data recorded are plotted repeated with the equal and are compared amongst percentage and quick opening each valves, respectively. other for further analysis.

1)

Linear valve Stroke percentage (%) 0 25 50 75 100 75 50 25 0 Pressure drop P (psi) 7.60 4.00 1.54 0.79 0.55 0.78 1.50 3.95 7.73 Flow rate percentage (m-1) 37.40 40.22 52.80 55.85 56.55 55.65 52.30 40.00 1.00

2) Equal percentage valve Stroke percentage (%) 0 25 50 75 100 75 Pressure drop P (psi) 7.46 6.88 5.39 1.55 0.59 1.56 Flow rate percentage (m-1) 1.00 13.19 29.18 52.04 56.06 51.83

50 25 0

5.38 6.88 7.45

29.20 13.27 1.00

3) Quick opening valve Stroke percentage (%) 0 25 50 75 100 75 50 25 0 Pressure drop P (psi) 12.00 1.90 0.93 0.85 0.90 0.85 0.95 1.95 12.00 Flow rate percentage (m-1) 1.86 53.84 56.55 56.85 56.55 56.73 56.40 53.60 1.79

DISCUSSION
This experiment is conducted in order to determine the characteristic curve of linear, equal percentage and quick opening control valve. The characteristic curve is the study of the effect of opening on the pressure drop and flow rate. The graphs obtain in this experiment show the relationship between stoke percentage (opening) of control valve and flow rate percentage and pressure drop.

a) Linear control valve

The linear control valve is designed so that the flow rate characteristic is directly proportional to the valve lift (H) (valve opening), at a constant differential pressure. A linear valve achieves this by having a linear relationship between the valve lift and the orifice pass area as shown below.

Figure 1: Flow / lift curve for a linear valve

For example, at 60% valve lift, a 60% orifice size allows 60% of the full flow to pass. However, the graph we obtain for linear control valve from this experiment does not shown a linear characteristic. This maybe because of some error happen during conducting the experiment.

b) Equal percentage control valve

In this flow characteristic, equal increments of valve opening (stoke percentage) produce equal percentage changes in the existing flow. The change in flow rate is always proportional to the flow rate just before the change in position is made for a valve plug, disc or ball position. When the valve plug, disc or ball is near

its seat & the flow is small, the change in flow rate will be small; with a large flow, the change in flow rate will be large.

Equal percentage control valves are widely used in industrial purpose. They are generally used for pressure control applications. They are also used where a large percentage of the total system pressure drop is normally absorbed by the system itself, with only a relatively small percentage by the control valve. These are also recommended for applications where highly varying pressure conditions can be expected.

c) Quick opening control valve

The quick opening control valve will give a large change in flow rate for a small valve opening from the closed position. For example, a valve opening (stoke percentage) of 50% may result in an orifice pass area and flow rate up to 90% of its maximum potential. Thats why the graph we obtain from this experiment show a very fast increment of flow rate percentage when we open the valve which is at 25% stoke opening, the flow rate percentage is 53.84% A valve using this type of plug usually has too high a valve gain for use in modulating control. So it is limited to on-off service, such as sequential operation in either batch or semi-continuous processes.

CONCLUSION Generally, a closed-loop control system consists of the sensor which is used to detect the changes in the process and send the signal to transmitter. The transmitter receives signal from the sensor and send it to controller in order to do the calculation to adjust it according to the input set point value. Finally, the signal is send to the final control element in order to carry out the task. In this experiment, the final control element used is the control valves. There are three types of control valve used which is linear, equal percentage and quick opening control valves. Linear control valve is the most expensive control valve among the three. Equal percentage control valve is widely used control valve such as piping purposes at our home. Whereas quick opening control valve is used for safety purposes. In this experiment, we can conclude that for linear control valve, the flow capacity increases linearly with the valve travel. For equal percentage control valve, the flow capacity increases exponentially with valve trim travel. Lastly, quick opening control valve provides large changes in flow for very small changes in lift.

ERROR AND RECOMMENDATION The tuning input can only reach a maximum value of 99.7% which is less than the required value of 100%. This is because the equipment is frequently used by the students. Thus, it is advised to do a regular checking and fix the error of the equipment.