V-LOG EVO Trim

Control Valve applications involving high pressure drop ratio vapor fluids are known to be destructive to both surrounding equipment and to the noise sensitive environment, while at the same time these applications are some of the most critical applications found within the plant, often protecting key equipment such as compressors.

The high-pressure reduction in these applications will result in vapor fluid expansion, causing negative effects such as extreme noise and system-damaging vibration.

The Baker Hughes Additive Manufacturing and the Valves product line are pleased to announce the latest low-energy EVO Trim technology enabled by Additive Manufacturing. This new valve technology is an advancement in the industry, providing an innovative new method to reduce pressure using additive manufacturing to optimize flow path resistors, and achieve the most efficient and impactful energy letdown method available today.

Existing Design

Traditional control valve solutions have been required to provide enhanced multistage, high resistance tortuous flow paths to gradually reduce the pressure drop and manage the velocity and energy within the trim. However, while this technology is effective for the application, it is often extremely inefficient due to high flow resistance and requires oversized valve internals to fit such complex flow paths. These valves are often very expensive to purchase and fit within a traditional piping system, making it difficult for plant designers to build a system around the valve. Conventionally, these parts are made by laser cutting of flow paths in flat disks, then brazing-to-bond, and finish machining into the functional stack.

Validated Technology

The patented low-energy Masoneilan EVO trim can achieve capacities of 160% over those achieved by conventional high-pressure tortuous path gas flow trims, at the same time as cutting the sound pressure generated by half. This new trim achieves a similar 50:1 pressure ratio application range as that achieved by conventional energy management tortuous path trims. Packaging of many more flow passages into the same size trim, without cluttering the outlet area, allows for a reduction in trim size to meet a similar valve capacity without increasing the velocity or energy, hence noise generation. The increase in flow capacity through a valve has benefits for both the valve manufacturer and customers. Both the diameter and height of the trim and valve body can be reduced using this new technology by reducing the plug size and valve stroke through more efficient flow path optimization. These reductions in bulk valve size create an improved compact valve design, higher structural frequencies, and consequently lower valve vibrations.

Challenges

• Improve Performance: 160% capacity increase with limited noise generation, lower vibration, and within a compact design.
• Addressing urgent customer needs in a short lead-time.
• Reducing high manufacturing complexity (laser cutting, brazing, and machining).

Results

• AM enabled revolutionary design for flow capacity improvement of 160% and sound pressure reduction by 50%.
• Anticipating V-LOG size reduction, resulting in Valve size reduction.
• Part consolidation ~20 brazed plates to 1 printed part with a reduction in manufactured steps, which results in carbon footprint reduction and minimum waste.
• Manufacturing complexity reduction; ~20+ brazed plates to 1 printed part.
• 16+ weeks to ~6 weeks manufacturing time reduction.
• Manufacturing process control.
• Design automation to enable supply chain simplification and process digitization.
• Mass-customization of specialized products.

Benefits

• Flow capacity improvement: 160%
• Sound pressure reduction: 50%
• Lead-time reduction: 16+ to less than 6 weeks
• Part consolidation: 50+ parts to 1