Gate valves
Gate valves can be divided into three subcategories: wedge (slide) gate valves, knife gate valves, and rubber lined gate valves. The closing element is a gate raised and lowered by rotating the valve’s hand wheel. The structure of a gate valve is fairly simple, for which reason it is one of the basic industrial valve types.General advantages common to all gate valve types include small pressure loss. The gate valve stroke covers the entire DN area, in which case the medium flows freely through the closing port. Products offered by Konwell are sealed in all flow directions, which means that backflow can be prevented with all gate valve types. The direction of hand wheel rotation can be selected according to recommendations in the user manual.
The disadvantages include difficulty of control. When throttling the flow, the medium wears both the closing surfaces and the valve housing, thereby reducing the valve service life. Gate valves are comparatively expensive to maintain. In practice, special tools are always required for maintenance.
In steam and condensate applications, only wedge and slide gate valves are used. Their temperature and pressure resistance is suitable for even the most demanding applications. For knife gate valves and rubber lined gate valves, see the Process valves section.
