The difference of full seal and half seal for sanitary ball valve
Customers often ask me about sanitary ball valve, but they are not clear that the sanitary ball valve has half seal and full seal . The reason why the sanitary valve is called sanitary is mostly because its internal structure is designed hygienically, not just polished.
What is hygiene? It means protection,maintenance, health and safety. Therefore, the sanitary ball valve should be highly clean, easy to clean, and no dead corners, and it will not cause the risk of contamination because of the residue of the medium, resulting in the loss and waste of materials.
Full seal and half seal, refers to the ball valve sealing gasket, that is the different degree of covering of the ball seat to the ball, the higher the degree of covering, the smaller the dead zone space of the valve cavity, the valve cavity has become an unstable factor of fluid accumulation.
Strictly speaking, the half seal ball valve can not be called as a sanitary valve, because there are residues, dead corners, there are certain limitations in the use of water and gas.
The full seal sanitary ball valve adopts the all-inclusive design, meets the CIP/SIP sterilization and cleaning requirements, which well solves the problem of material remaining in the valve chamber, so the full seal ball valve is also known as the non-retention ball valve.
The valve core seal (seat seal) of the ball valve, PTFE(polytetrafluoroethylene) material is generally used, the processing loss of tetrafluoroethylene rod is large and the cost is high. The price difference between full seal ball valve and half seal ball valve is reflected in this.
I have seen some ball valves circulating in the market, the seat seal is thinner than our half seal ball valve , shaped like a flat pad, like the thickness of a coin. With the increase of the number of valve opening and closing, subject to the processing accuracy, the deformation of the valve seat seal will be significantly increased, and the internal leakage of the ball valve is a large probability. There are simply use thick silicone gaskets, the ball seems to become a floating ball, wear resistance can be seen.
