How Valve Automation Keeps Water Flowing Without Electricity

A wire manufacturing facility needed a safety net for their custom water system. Their wire production process required special deionized water to flow through certain areas that need to be cooled. The deionized water is supplied from an in-house water pump skid that cannot run without electricity. If the facility were to lose power, the wire production system would overheat without a backup water source.

It was critical to find a solution that would automatically protect their system around the clock. The manufacturer's present solution was to always have someone on standby, in case the plant lost power. In that case, the operator would use a manual butterfly valve to divert flow and shut down the system. This solution was extremely inefficient, and potentially catastrophic for the wire production system, should the power go out.

When they decided it was time for a more reliable answer, they went to the valve group at Crane Engineering for some ideas.

Crane Engineering's valve engineers suggested a three-port "T" valve that would allow the wire product system to use city water if needed.

The valve package included a spring return fail safe. If the plant were to have a power outage, the actuator would automatically "fail" and the spring would mechanically operate the valve to switch from deionized water to city water. The deionized water pump skid would shut down during power loss so the valve must switch water sources to keep fluid flowing. Without this automatic spring-loaded fail safe, the valve wouldn’t switch water sources and the pipeline would run dry, causing the production system to overheat.

The Indelac Controls® electric actuator installed on the valve allows operator to easily and effortlessly change the water source. This is also useful for the manufacturer when switching jobs because deionized water is not required between wire production runs.

We filmed a demonstration video of this setup. Take a look: