I had always heard that a plug valve should be used for manually balancing hydronic systems instead of a butterfly valve due to the poor throttling ability of the butterfly valve. Oil pumps However, I am noticing more and more valve manufacturers offering and manual balancing valve with venturi and P/T ports utilizing a butterfly valve. fire pumps Have butterfly valve's throttling characteristics changed over the years or are these just more sub-par products offered up by companies trying to save a buck? Thoughts?There seem to be a lot of manufacturers trying to shoehorn Butterfly valves into every posible niche. Split case pumpsThey are pretty lousy block valves for the most part, they've always been really terrible throttle valves.I won't use the new butterfly valves for throttling service, there are too many good products on the market to use a marginal valve.Vacuum pumpsThat being said; there is no application on this earth where I would recommend a plug valve. I know someone will follow this post with examples of where plug valves are the perfect answer and they may even be right, I've just spent way too much time with a 36-inch pipe wrench, 20 ft cheater, 12 lb hammer, and a whole roustabout crew to try to shut plug valves that haven't been serviced in a couple of decades. In-line pumps I know that the problem could have been mitigated with a bit of PM, but I find that in bad times the valve service program is the first thing cut and then it is slow to be re-implemented. An unserviced plug valve is a disaster.If you want to throttle a process why not use a throttle valve? Globe valves, V-balls, and dozens of linear-flow chokes all work really well in throttling service.

MORE NEWS