NEWS & EVENTS

Reduced plant downtime through collaboration, applied engineering and outstanding products wins Anval valves a major plant expansion contract from Global Silicon producer.

Simcoa Operations, the leader in silicon production has recently selected the Anval Rotary Floating Shoe (RFS) valve for some of the toughest duties at their Western Australian Plant. The Simcoa site based 2 hours south of Perth close to Bunbury has recently undergone a major expansion of its operations.

The plant runs 24/7 and, like any successful operation, needs to minimize unforeseen break downs and stoppages in production. One area of concern for the new expansion was the reliability of another brand of the rotary valve which the plant had been using over the last decade. The valves in question were of a unique fabrication which was subject to high wear and subsequent leakage within the process line. Up to three times a year these valves would require workshop maintenance involving the total disassembly and re-machining of vital elements.

Anval was invited to provide a technical solution to counter these on-going maintenance issues and furnish Simcoa with a long term solution for the existing operation that could also be applied to the plant expansion. Anval’s engineering team studied the situation in collaboration with the Simcoa team and selected the heavy duty RFS valve to deal with this challenging process situation. An RFS unit was installed at the Simcoa plant in June 2010 in the cyclone discharge to handle silica fume. Over a 12 month period, this valve was monitored and analysed by Anval’s engineers to gauge any abrasion or loss of functionality in its installed duty. The installation of this valve has been a tremendous success and the original valve has lasted for over 14 months without any maintenance or adjustment.

Mr Drew Harris, Project Manager for the Simcoa expansion said: “Early indications of the performance of the Anval RFS exceeded expectations such that we have purchased over 20 of these high-performance units for our plant expansion. The chronic failures that were symptomatic of the previously installed valves have now been alleviated and the Simcoa site has selected the Anval RFS as the valve of choice in its current expansion and for all future replacements within the existing process plant.”

We have always prided ourselves on the reliability and durability of the RFS range of valves. We were confident that their sturdy and simple construction would be ideal for this abrasive environment. A particularly pleasing aspect of this project has been the close cooperation of Anval and Simcoa’s engineers, each thoroughly assessing the process conditions and data to ensure a long term success for their operation.