Dedicated valves refer to valves that can be used in various special environments and adapt to various complex working conditions. A dedicated valve is a general mechanical product widely used in the construction and development of the national economy. It plays an extremely important role in energy, chemical industry, medicine, agriculture, food, military and other industries. With the in-depth advancement of Industry 4.0, dedicated valves have also entered a new stage of development, and the technology and market of dedicated valves have also undergone new changes.
Compared with ordinary types of
valves, dedicated valves have obvious characteristics such as extremely complex internal flow, special structure, special materials and special purposes. As a dedicated valve among many valves, it is used in various special environments, can adapt to various complex working conditions, plays a special role, and undertakes particularly complex tasks. Therefore, dedicated valves are often referred to as the throat of industrial pipelines. Typically dedicated valves include main water supply control valves, regulator spray valves, high-pressure steam traps, pilot-operated globe valves, multi-stage pressure reducing valves, sleeve control valves, heart flap valves and so on. The dedicated valve is much more complicated than the ordinary valve, and it belongs to high-end valve series.
The distinction of dedicated valves is greatly related to their applications, such as safety valves applied to large pressure-bearing equipment, steam traps used for high-pressure steam heating systems, high parameter pressure reducing valves applied to high parameter cogeneration systems, cryogenic ball valves applied to liquefied natural gas transmission systems, and the key valve of nuclear power used in the pressurized water reactor nuclear power plants.
In recent years, with the rapid development of modern science and technology, industrial equipment has the characteristics of high parameterization, being large-scale and intelligent, especially thermal power, nuclear power, aerospace, petrochemical and other fields. Various complex working conditions such as high temperatures and high pressure. Units with complex working conditions such as various high temperatures and high pressure are constantly appearing, and the pipeline systems or devices involved are becoming more and more complex. At the same time, with the upgrading of industries and the rise of emerging industries, the application of dedicated valves has become more and more extensive; it has shown a high degree of prosperity in some fields, and some companies have development dividends.
Under the background of encouragement of national policy and accumulation and development of technology, many key fields such as electric power, oil and gas, coal chemical industry rely on major projects, which have greatly promoted the progress of dedicated valves. Good progress has been made especially in the development of high-parameter control valves being made in China. However, objectively speaking, some dedicated valves made in China involving complex working conditions such as ultra-high temperature, ultra-low temperature, ultra-high pressure, nuclear environment, vacuum environment and special fluid medium have not yet made breakthroughs in technology, and still greatly rely on imports. These are the key directions of the current substitution technology for dedicated valves.
A dedicated valve has high costs from research and development, design, manufacturing, processing to inspection as a high-end valve due to its high technical content, many requirements for functions, wide applications, and long research and development cycles. Therefore, it is difficult for ordinary valve enterprises to undertake the task of the research and development of dedicated valves, and there are very few domestic valve enterprises that can manufacture high-end dedicated valves. However, driven by the general trend of Industry 4.0, some valve factories have made breakthroughs in the research and development of dedicated valves.
In the era of Industry 4.0, a new round of scientific and technological revolution has brought great industrial changes. The new generation of information technology is greatly integrated with modern manufacturing, and industrial automation, digitization, and intelligence have become an important development trend in the intelligent manufacturing equipment industry.
In the long run, the digitalization of dedicated valves will be reflected in two aspects: one is in the design and production links, the digital design of dedicated valves, the level of intelligent manufacturing, and the research and development capabilities of key parts, and the other is in industrial operation scenarios; precise control, fault diagnosis and digital operation and maintenance of valves will be important trends in the future development of dedicated valves.