Severn’s Innovative Approach to Fugitive Emissions Reduction

Severn’s Innovative Approach to Fugitive Emissions Reduction

Severn realise the role they play in today’s climate conscious world to help eliminate fugitive emissions from valves. We have utilised our knowledge in severe service applications to ensure Severn can offer the most suitable product for the end user.

Through Severn’s repair intelligence and close operating relationships with operators, Severn has been able to understand the difficulties facing operations in the specification, purchasing and servicing of Control, Choke and Butterfly valves that are critical to reducing fugitive emissions across industrial facilities. We pride ourselves in offering solutions that perform no matter how severe or critical the application is. Ensuring that the end user gains the best valve performance and reduced maintenance costs over the lifecycle of the valve.

It has long been understood that approximately 60% of fugitive emissions come from valves. Even more so 80% of those emissions are related to the stem/shaft seal. Naturally, the focus is on this area with the relative fugitive emissions standards such as API 622 and ISO 15848. What is often misunderstood is the requirement for the standards to be applicable across varying temperature and pressure differentials. For this reason, Severn has 43 different certificates for sealing systems in valves based on their application requirements, up to 10,000 Psi and 425ºC. By utilising a range of materials from filled graphite through to custom PTEE-based compounds, Severn has coupled with novel packing designs, been able to achieve tighter leakage rates that had previously been achieved with standard packing sets.

It is vital for the end user to understand the leakage class requirements when fugitive emissions are concerned to prevent over or underspecifying the solution. We often see “fugitive emissions” specified without clarification of the requirements. The various requirements from TUV through API and ISO specifications require different testing methodologies and even different testing mediums. This means that the testing standards are not directly comparable to each other.

Severn often see the specification of “Low-e” or “Low emission” packing without reference to the specification. In some instances, these packing sets can have allowable leakage of up to 500ppm, many times that of systems tested to the ISO 15848-1 standard and potentially resulting in reduced on-site performance and / or higher maintenance costs.

Severn has focused and will continue to focus its testing efforts on ISO 15848 standards. We feel that these offer the widest range of qualification options while not utilising harmful greenhouse gases that can be emitted using some API methodology. The fact that sealing systems are tested on the valves they are designed for and not a standard test fixture ensures maximum customer confidence in our products.

Severn have focused on passing some of the most stringent testing with class A leakage classes and up to 40,000 operations available for some applications.

Ensuring that performance is at the heart of our product range, and you achieve your core remit of safe operations and minimum downtime.

To further the commitment to reducing fugitive emissions and reduce the burden on end users to meet tightening specifications, all Severns OCT triple offset butterfly range offer the fugitive emissions packing sets as standard fitment on all standard valves in the range. Ensuring that the end user experiences maximum valve performance in all applications.

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