There is one essential feature of any industrial valve that dramatically affects its flow rate, energy efficiency, ability to handle the temperature and pressure conditions of your application, and overall compliance with standards and regulations for your industry.
Selecting the right valve for the job requires you to pay close attention to its orifice designation so you can choose a valve that adequately lets you precisely control your flow rate and specific pressure levels while avoiding cavitation, choking, and inefficient performance.
What is orifice designation?
Orifice designation describes the shape, size, material, and other essential attributes of a valve’s orifice, all of which play a critical role in determining how fluids, including liquids and gases, flow through your piping system and how effectively the valve can control and regulate flow.
Orifice designation is a set of standardized values that describes:
- Size in terms of orifice diameter, which influences flow control and pressure drop
- Shape, which influences turbulence and pressure recovery
- Material, which impacts durability and resistance to corrosion and erosion
- Flow coefficient
- Position and orientation
What is standard orifice sizing?
In order to provide useful metrics, valve manufacturers follow universal standards for orifice designation that ensure you can select a valve that conforms to the specific requirements of your application. Commonly used standards include ISO 5167 and ANSI/ISA-75.01.01, which both provide guidelines for orifice plate sizing for various flow requirements and fluid properties.
The American Petroleum Institute (API) also provides standards for orifice sizing, especially for Pressure Safety Valves (PSV) and relief valves used in oil and gas applications. API orifice designation standards specify materials, dimensions, and testing procedures for valves that play essential roles in pipelines, instrumentation and measurement systems, and other processes.
Specific API standards such as API RP 14.3 and API RP 520 provide detailed information on the relevant API orifice designations for various applications.
The Critical Importance of PSV Orifice Designation
A Pressure Safety Valve (PSV) must be capable of doing its job effectively at all times to protect pressure vessels, piping systems, and personnel from safety hazards, even in the event of power failure. PSVs play a vital role in preventing overpressure and minimizing safety hazards to equipment and personnel, which makes choosing the right PSV orifice designation especially crucial for industrial and military flow control infrastructure.
Choosing the right orifice designation for PSV ensures your pressure safety and relief valves:
- Are suited to the task of preventing overpressure
- Are up-to-code in your industry
- Maintain the integrity of your processes and overall system by maintaining specific pressure ranges
- Can handle the pressure and temperature demands of their environment
- Respond appropriately to pressure fluctuations, preventing under-relief or over-relief
- Reduce the environmental impact of over-relief
- Will offer long-term reliability by avoiding valve damage, seat leakage, and other operational problems that can shorten your valves’ lifespan
Valve nozzle orifices are frequently categorized by letters, which correspond to the orifice area. For example, Dante Valve’s orifice designation C refers to pressure relief valves with an API area of 0.068 square inches.
Understanding Dante Valve’s PSV Orifice Designation Chart
Danco orifice valve specifications provide a comprehensive look into the physical features of our pressure relief valves.
In these PSV orifice designation charts, you can match our offerings of pressure relief valves to the operating conditions of your piping systems to choose the right fit for your right job by matching your system requirements to:
- Valve size
- ASA/ANSI standard flange connectors for valve inlet and outlet
- Maximum set pressure in PSIG (pounds per square inch gauge) at 100, 450, 800, and
- Maximum back pressure in PSIG at 100°F
- Maximum valve dimensions
- Valve weight in pounds
Paying careful attention to these orifice designation figures is essential for selecting the right pressure relief valve to fit your piping system’s dimensional and weight constraints, connect with your existing pipe infrastructure, and withstand the maximum pressures and temperatures of the liquids and gases that flow through your piping infrastructure.
Dante Valve is a valve manufacturer and distributor dedicated to quality, integrity, and responsibility to our customers. Our commitment is to ensure you receive the best quality in valves that will meet the high standards demanded by your application.
If you need assistance selecting the right valve for your industrial flow control systems or have any questions about our products or service offerings, contact our experts online or call 888-212-3222.