In a brine concentrator, an original competitor’s expansion joint failed upon start up.
Water Treatment
This facility is a Zero Liquid Discharge (ZLD) power plant. Water is initially pumped from a well, pre-treated, used as process water, then reclaimed and retreated with a Brine Concentrator for use in their cooling towers. No city water is used and no waste water is disposed of from the site.
Brine concentrators use thermal energy to evaporate water, which is subsequently condensed and discharged as clean distilled water.
Brine Concentrators are also used in water treatment facilities in desalination plants, mining operations and well drilling operations in the oil & gas industry.
The original expansion
Article re-posted with permission from Parker Hannifin Sealing & Shielding Team.
Original content can be found on Parker’s Website and was written by William Pomeroy, applications engineer, Parker O-Ring & Engineered Seals Division.
As mentioned in part one of Parker's seal failure blog series, O-ring and seal failures are often due to a combination of failure modes, making root cause difficult to uncover. It's important to gather hardware information, how the seal is installed, application conditions, and how long a seal was in service before starting the failure analysis process. In part 1, compression set, extrusion and nibbling, and spiral failure were discussed. In part 2 of Parker's series, they will review four other common failure modes to familiarize yourself with before diagnosing a potential seal failure in your application.
Rapid gas decompression (commonly called RGD, or sometimes explosive decompression (ED)) is a failure mode that is the result of gas that has permeated into a seal that quickly exits the seal cross section, causing damage.
Detection of this failure mode can be difficult, as the damage does not always show on the exterior. When the damage is visible, it can look like air bubbles on out the outside, or perhaps a fissure that has propagated to the surface. The damage may also be hidden under the surface. If the seal is cut for a cross section inspection, RGD damage will look like fissures in the seal that may or may not propagate all the way to the surface.
Parker’s guidance as to how to avoid this failure mode is: 1) Keep the depressurization rate lower than 200 psi per minute. If this cannot be achieved, they would suggest 2) RGD resistant materials. Parker offers these RGD resistant options from the HNBR, FKM, EPDM, and FFKM polymer families.
Abrasion damage is the result of the seal rubbing against a bore or shaft, resulting in a reduction of cross sectional thickness due to wear. As the seal wears, it has the potential to lose compression on the mating surface. This wear is compounded by the fact that dynamic applications already have lower compression recommendations.
To reduce risk for this failure mode, it requires consideration during design and seal selection. The surface finish and concentricity of the hardware will be very important considerations. A smooth surface results in less friction (suggest 8 to 16 RMS), which in turn results in less wear. Increasing the durometer of the seal material helps resist wear, and there are also internally lubricated materials that could be employed. If the application is high temperature, one should consider the impacts of thermal expansion on the elastomer being used. The thermal expansion increases contact pressure, which would increase friction / wear.
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The American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) International Committee F03 on Gaskets recently released the latest standard practice to derive gasket design constants for the proper design of bolted flanged joints (BFJs): ASTM F2836-18. End users of gaskets can then use these gasket constants for proper BFJ design using calculation methods that are currently being developed by a special working group of American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code (BPVC) Section VIII at the time of this publication. In this article, the current test procedure, the mathematical models of the test evaluation and the calculation of the characteristics are described and discussed.
Most industry professionals are aware that BFJs used in fluid service are complex mechanical systems. In order to create a high-performing BFJ, a designer needs to carefully consider not only the service conditions the BFJ will encounter, but also the performance characteristics inherent to the components of the BFJ. The gasket itself is one of these critical, yet often overlooked, components, and efforts to determine and quantify the performance characteristics of gaskets have been ongoing for decades.
The newest of these efforts to be published in the United States is ASTM F2836-18: Standard Practice for Gasket Constants for Bolted Joint Design (commonly referred to as the Room Temperature Tightness Test, or ROTT). The design constants produced by this method enable a more robust design of BFJs compared to previous, antiquated design constants, such as the m and y factors.
The crucial gasket constants produced by this standard practice are a, Gb and Gs. These constants effectively describe the tightness behavior of the gasket material, reflective of different loading and service conditions.
In addition to their application to the ASME calculation method currently under development, the constants can also be used to compare materials so the proper one may be selected for the application.
ASTM F2836-18 is a helium leakage testing and evaluation method that determines tightness-based design constants at room temperature for pressurized bolted flange connections that are designed in accordance with ASME BPVC. As such, ROTT applies mainly to all types of circular gasket products—including, but not limited to, sheet-type, spiral wound, solid metal and jacketed gaskets.
As such, these constants stand to be of interest to all parties who work with circular gaskets and have a vested interest in producing a high-performing BFJ, including end users, BFJ assembly contractors and gasket manufacturers.
The test method consists of analyzing data from multiple gasket leakage tests in order to calculate the three aforementioned design constants for a particular model and size of gasket. The testing can be performed in a pair of appropriately sized flanges, using bolts to achieve varying gasket loads, or in a servo-hydraulic test stand of adequate capacity (Image 1).
In total, the procedure consists of two high-pressure (HP) tests at 6 megapascal (MPa) (870 pounds per square inch [psi]) of helium and two low-pressure (LP) tests at 2 MPa (290 psi) of helium, for a total of four tests on four different specimens. In addition to the differences in internal pressure, the HP and LP tests are also distinct from each other in terms of the gasket loading sequences.
The HP test consists of loading and unloading sequences, continually introducing successively higher loads onto the gasket while interrupting this loading sequence with intermittent unloading ramps. The LP test consists of only a loading sequence.
In both tests, the helium leak rate is measured at these various gasket loads.
For the purposes of test evaluation and gasket constant derivation, the different loading sequences of the tests are categorized as either Part A or Part B. Part A consists of the loading sequences, while Part B consists of the unloading sequences. Therefore, the HP test contains both Part A and Part B sequences, while the LP test consists of Part A only.
See Image 2 and Image 3 for details of the HP and LP testing sequences, respectively.
With its increasing gasket loads, Part A simulates assembly of the gasket in the joint, and therefore represents the gasket seating process. The data from this portion of the test is used to determine the required seating load for the gasket to create a tight seal.
Part B simulates the operating conditions by unloading the specimen to different gasket stress levels. This replicates unloading of the gasket, seen in real applications, due to various factors including internal pressure and relaxation effects of a gasket during operation. Part B test data is used to determine the required operating gasket load in order to maintain a tight seal.
The connections to shell and tube heat exchangers pose immense challenges for the seals that are used because of both the chemically aggressive media and the frequent temperature load changes. Despite its excellent chemical resistance,polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) is not typically suitable as a sealing material in this case because the creep tendency of this material jeopardizes a reliable seal.
Shell and tube bundle heat exchangers generally include not only several connection pieces but also a shell cover flange with a significantly larger nominal diameter.The shell cover flange creates the seal to the tube bundle flange, which then seals the shell flange. These connections are subjected to the full operating pres-sure and test pressure of dozens of bar and seal it from the environment. Oftentimes the tube bundles are arranged in several passes that are channeled by the use of partition plates. This requires a seal at
The function of a V-Ring seal, or V-Ring, is to act as a centrifugal seal acting against the bearing face, pushing dirt and contaminants away from the bearing area. V-Rings are not designed to seal against fluids or pressure differentials. However, as stated above, they are excellent at excluding all sorts of contaminants. They provide effective protection against loss and maintenance, reduce wear, increase the life of the retainer and bearings, and also work well in dry running applications.
[caption id="attachment_4798" align="alignright" width="500"] The most innovative V-Ring on the market: The Zava Seal with a quick-lock
Article re-posted with permission from Parker Hannifin Sealing & Shielding Team.
Original content can be found on Parker’s Website and was written by Nathan Wells, application engineer, Engineered Polymer Systems Division.
So, you’ve unboxed the shiny new Parker seals you ordered – now what? Installing seals for the first time can be challenging without the right know-how and tools. In this article we’ll discuss best practices for seal installation in linear fluid power systems, and how to design your system to make seal installation fast and damage-free.
First, let’s look at three common groove styles:
• Closed
• Stepped, and
• Open (or two-piece)
The closed seal groove fully encapsulates the seal and is the most common style used (see Figure 1).
Closed grooves are simple to machine and offer the best support for seals. Since seals in this configuration are surrounded by solid metal, without a well-developed process, installation can be challenging. Rod seals need to be folded to fit into internal (throat) grooves and piston seals must be stretched over the outside of the piston.
Notice how both designs shown in Fig. 2 and Fig. 3 utilize static seals (turquoise colored seal) on the opposing side of the dynamic, primary seals. Therefore, installation in either instance requires techniques and tools for both rod and piston seals.
Typically utilized to ease seal installation, stepped grooves feature a reduced diameter on the low-pressure side of the seal as shown in Fig. 4 and Fig. 5.
As shown, the “step” is just wide enough to hold the seal in place as the rod or piston strokes back and forth. This way, seals don’t have to be folded or stretched nearly as much when installing. This design works well for single seals only holding pressure from one direction, like Parker FlexiSeals™.
When using multiple seals stacked in series or in systems with bi-directional pressure, a closed or two-piece groove is needed for support on both sides.
Open or two-piece grooves are used when the seal is either too small to be stretched or folded into a closed groove, or if it’s made of a material that doesn’t spring back after flexing.
Figures 6 and 7 show two examples of open grooves. Figure 6 uses a washer and a snap ring to hold the seal in place. Figure 7 uses a bolt-on cap. These groove designs can be used for bi-directional seals, too. As you can see, open grooves cost more to produce but seal installation is a snap.
Open grooves also make removing the seal much easier – useful in systems which require periodic seal replacement.