United Valve - Valve Repair, Testing & Modification - In Shop or Field Service

Originally published in the summer 1996 issue of Valve Magazine Valves in petrochemical and refining installations are subject to numerous standards and specifications issued by many supporting organizations. Today’s valve standards are dynamic documents that reflect sound engineering practice, changes in market demands and changes in technology and manufacturing procedures. This document focuses on some of [...]

Once upon a time, most large refineries and chemical plants had their own valve shops, complete with a full compliment of experienced valve repair technicians. These service departments took care of most of the plants repair needs, although oftentimes valves were simply replaced rather than refurbished. During the boom times of the 50’s and early [...]

It’s a jungle out there, so the saying goes. Unfortunately, that jungle extends to and includes your work environment. And if you are responsible for some part of a chemical processing facility, the vines and beasts of that jungle wrap around and through the pipe racks, instrument panels and valves you call home every workday. [...]

In a perfect world of valve supply and demand, an end-user would be able to purchase any combination of valve configurations from the distributor with only a few days notice. The commonly-stocked ‘standard trim’ valves would share shelf space with the most unusual trimmed or end-configured valves. However, in this world of globally procured commodity [...]

Who Moved my Cheese? The heck with who moved my cheese, who moved my valve repair customers! Those of us in the valve repair business can certainly relate to Dr. Spencer Johnson’s book, “Who Moved My Cheese”, which deals with handling change. The way our business is rapidly changing, it feels like just about the [...]

The ubiquitous gate valve has a long history of serving the flow control industry in the United States. From its humble beginnings during the middle of the 19th century, to its universal usage today, the gate valve has soldiered on behind the scenes of America’s industrial pageantry. The first valve patent in America was for [...]

This low-tech valve may not have changed much in the last 100 years, but the gate valve plays a major role in virtually every refinery, chemical plant and industrial facility in the world. The most popular style of valve in the world of flow control is the gate valve. They are the on/off switches of [...]

As the valve world continues to turn and tilt its production towards new countries and their untested manufacturing plants, the potential backlash is a rise in quality issues. In decades past, when bottom-dollar pricing was not the chief procurement driver, higher quality cast steel valves, produced in the United States, Great Britain, and Japan could [...]