The Origin and History of Valves-Instrument Network

Contacting every dayvalveDo you know the origin and history of valves? In a broad sense, thousands of years ago during the Warring States period, ancient people used valves for production operations. Isn't it a long time ago! As practitioners in the modern pump and valve industry, it is meaningful and interesting to briefly review the origin and history of valves. After reading it, one will feel proud and honored as a valve and pump industry person, and also have a sense of responsibility and commitment to the future development of the industry.

Speaking of valves, I believe many people are familiar with them. Yes, the use of valves touches every day of our lives. When we turn on water to drink or open fire hydrants to irrigate farmland, we interact with valves. The dense interweaving of pipelines is accompanied by the persistence of various valves.

The development of valves is closely related to the development of industrial production processes. In ancient times, people used large stones or tree trunks to prevent the flow of water or change its direction in order to regulate the water flow of rivers or streams. As early as the end of the Warring States period, Li Bing, the governor of Qin Shu Commandery, had already dug salt wells in the Chengdu Plain. When taking brine, use fine bamboo as the brine extraction tube, inside the brine tube sleeve, and the bottom of the tube is made of ripe leather as the opening and closing valve. One tube can extract several buckets of brine, and a large wooden frame is erected on the well. Use a pulley and a cart to extract brine. Empty the bamboo bucket at one end and install a wooden oneplunger valveTo prevent leakage, put it into the well and extract brine to make salt - weren't ancient people very talented!

The Egyptian and Greek civilizations invented several primitive types of valves for irrigation of crops, etc. However, it is widely believed that the ancient Romans developed quite complex water systems for crop irrigation, using plug valves and plunger valves, and using check valves to prevent backflow of water.

During the Renaissance, valves were used in the ditches, irrigation projects, and other large-scale hydraulic system projects designed by artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci, and many of his technical solutions still exist today. Did you only know that Leonardo da Vinci was a great painter and not expect him to make such a significant contribution to valves.

Subsequently, due to the development of exercise technology and hydraulic machinery, Europe's requirements for valves gradually increased, so copper and aluminum plug valves were created, and valves entered the metal industry.

▲▲ Da Vinci Mechanical Manuscript Diagram

The modern history of the valve industry runs parallel to the Industrial Revolution and deepens with the deepening of the Industrial Revolution. In 1705, Newcomb invented the industrial steam engine and put forward control requirements for the operation of steam engines. In 1769, Watt created the steam engine, which officially introduced valves into the mechanical industry. Many steam engines used plug valves, safety valves, check valves, and butterfly valves.

Watt's invention of the steam engine marked the beginning of widespread application in the valve industry. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the rapid promotion of steam engines in industries such as mining, exercise, textiles, and machinery manufacturing led to an increasing number and quality of valves, resulting in the emergence of slide valves. He also invented a controller for adjusting the rotational speed, and since then, the control of fluid flow has been increasingly valued by people. The successive emergence of globe valves with threaded valve stems and wedge gate valves with trapezoidal threaded valve stems is a major breakthrough in valve development. The presentation of these two types of valves not only satisfied the increasing requirements of various industries for valve pressure and temperature at that time, but also preliminarily satisfied the requirements for flow regulation.

The true meaning of a valve should generally be a ball valve or a ball plug valve, which can be traced back to the design of John Wallen and John Chapmen in the 19th century, but it was not put into production at that time.

After World War II, the development of valves was facilitated by the government, and the United States was an early advocate of James Bury valves for submarines. So a series of new research and experimentation were carried out around the use of valves, and new valve technologies were also innovated with the war.

▲▲ Standard check valves used in warships

Due to the need for post-war reconstruction in many countries, as well as the development of various special materials including aggregate materials, smooth materials, stainless steel, and cobalt based hard alloys, old plug valves and butterfly valves have been given new uses, and ball valves and diaphragm valves based on the evolution of plug valves have been rapidly developed. The addition of globe valves, gate valves, and other types of valves has improved the quality. Gradually turning the valve manufacturing industry into an important sector of the machinery industry.

In the 1960s, developed industrialized countries gradually entered a period of prosperous development. Products from countries such as West Germany, Japan, Italy, France, and the United Kingdom were eager to find markets, and the export of complete sets of mechanical equipment drove the export of valves. From the late 1960s to the early 1980s, old colonial countries became independent one after another, eager to develop their national industries and importing a large amount of equipment, including valves; And the oil crisis led to major investments in the oil industry by oil producing countries. This series of reasons has led to a period of rapid growth in valve production, trade, and development, further promoting the development of the valve industry.

The production of valve industry in our country started relatively late. In the 1960s, the development of single seat valves, double seat valves and other products began, mainly imitating products from the former Soviet Union. Due to the backwardness of the mechanical industry, the precision of mechanical processing is low. Therefore, the product leakage is relatively large, but it can still meet the general control requirements of the industrial production process at that time.

Starting from the 1970s, with the expansion of industrial production scale and the increasing demand for industrial process control, some regulating valve products can no longer meet the requirements of production process control, such as the control requirements for high pressure, high pressure drop, low temperature, high temperature, and corrosive media. For this reason, some large petrochemical enterprises have introduced control valves, such as sleeve valves with balanced valve cores, eccentric rotary valves, etc., while introducing equipment, which has pointed out the development direction for domestic control valve manufacturers. Therefore, in the late 1970s, some manufacturers began to replicate products such as eccentric rotary valves.

Since the 1980s, with the implementation of China's reform and opening-up policy, backbone enterprises have been organized to introduce advanced technologies and processing equipment such as design and technology for similar foreign valve products, which has rapidly improved China's valve manufacturing technology and product quality. For example, various types of sleeve valves and eccentric rotary valves were produced, and the development of small-sized regulating valves began. With the progress of industrial projects such as large power stations, various electro-hydraulic actuators, long stroke actuators, and other actuators have also been developed to meet control requirements such as high thrust, high thrust torque, and long stroke.

In the 1990s, China's regulating valve industry also began to develop rapidly after introducing and digesting advanced technology from abroad. The gaps in some special industrial controls improved the level of China's regulating valve industry and narrowed the gap with foreign countries.

At present, domestic valve production backbone enterprises are able to design and manufacture various valves according to ISO standards, DIN German standards, AWWA American standards and other standards, and some manufacturers' products have reached advanced levels.

Valves are control components used in pipeline transportation systems, ranging from simple globe valves to various valves used in extremely complex self-control systems, including ball valves, butterfly valves, gate valves, globe valves, check valves, regulating valves, safety valves, plug valves, diaphragm valves, etc. Valves can be used to control the flow of various types of fluids such as air, water, steam, various corrosive media, mud, oil, liquid metals, and radioactive media. The distribution of the valve market is mainly based on the construction of engineering projects. The major users of valves are the petrochemical industry, power sector, metallurgical sector, chemical industry, and urban construction sector, such as urban water pipelines, building construction, and urban heating; Oil pipelines, pharmaceutical industry, food industry, etc. Valves are widely used in the water treatment industry, mainly in low-pressure valve products such as butterfly valves, gate valves, and check valves.