Why Can Stainless Steel Ball Valve Replace Gate Valve?

Among the numerous valve products, gate valves, pneumatic butterfly valves, and 1 Piece Threaded Ball Valve are all very commonly used valve types. However, many users do not know how to choose when selecting because they do not know the difference between them.

Gate valve is a common opening and closing valve that uses a gate (i.e., an opening and closing part, in which the opening and closing part is called a gate or a gate, and the gate seat is called a gate seat) to connect (fully open) or cut off (fully close) the medium in the pipeline. It is not allowed to be used as a cutoff. During use, the gate should be avoided from being opened slightly, because the erosion of the high-speed flowing medium will accelerate the damage of the sealing surface.

The gate moves up and down on a plane perpendicular to the center line of the gate seat channel, cutting off the medium in the pipeline like a gate, so it is called a gate valve.

The working principle of the ball valve is to make the valve unblocked or blocked by rotating the valve core. The ball valve is light and small in size. It can be made into a large diameter. It has reliable sealing, simple structure, and convenient maintenance. The sealing surface and the spherical surface are often in a closed state and are not easily eroded by the medium. It is widely used in various industries.

The ball valve and the plug valve are valves of the same type, but its closing piece is a sphere, which rotates around the center line of the valve body to achieve opening and closing. The ball valve is mainly used in the pipeline to cut off, distribute and change the flow direction of the medium.

The gate valve is a straight-stroke valve, that is, the valve stem drives the valve plate to move vertically up and down to complete the opening and closing of the gate valve. Therefore, the flow resistance of the gate valve is small, but because of its high opening height, the opening and closing speed is slow.

Butterfly valves and ball valves are angular stroke valves, that is, the valve plate of the butterfly valve rotates 90° around the valve axis to complete the opening and closing of the butterfly valve. Therefore, the opening height of the butterfly valve is only one-fourth of the channel diameter, so it opens and closes quickly.

The gate valve has small flow resistance and good sealing performance. Because the gate valve plate and the medium flow direction are at a vertical angle, if the gate valve is not opened and closed properly, the medium will flush the valve plate and cause the valve plate to vibrate, which can easily damage the gate valve seal. Therefore, it is mostly used for pipelines that require strict sealing and do not need to be opened and closed frequently, but is not suitable for adjusting pipeline medium parameters.

The gate valve is not suitable for emergency cut-off occasions due to its slow opening and closing speed.