Electric Actuator for Fuel Oil Control Valve

Control Valve Actuator

In a Power Station burning both low-sulphur fuel oil and natural gas, an electric control valve actuator was installed on an outdoor fuel oil control valve application. The existing 6” ball valves which utilized a pneumatic I/P positioner and spring diaphragm pneumatic actuator wasn’t performing well. A decision was made to use a ROTORK CVA electric control valve actuator because it provides extremely precise control-valve operation with repeatability and resolution performance at less than 0.1% of full scale.

Because the valve operates outdoors, and modulates frequently to control the flow of fuel oil held in storage tanks to the fuel oil pumps, its a difficult application to get precise control. The built-in Bluetooth communications makes it easy to set up, calibrate and monitor performance.

The valve failure mode is also very important, in both loses-of-signal and loss-of-power. The specified ROTORK Actuators use a charged super capacitor and the built-in programming of the actuator control to assure proper “fail-to” in any event.