Question: I’ve been lubricating and injecting sealant into my pipeline valves, but they still won’t shut off or operate. What’s going on?
Answer: This is not a lubrication problem. It could be any number of things. Rather than continuing to grease the valve, you need to perform advanced troubleshooting and regular preventative maintenance.
Our technicians encounter this type of situation all of the time. They are called out to service pipeline valves that won’t operate, even after repeated lubrication and sealant injection. Sometimes the valve won’t shut off at all. Sometimes it takes two people and an 8-foot cheater pipe to operate a 6-inch valve.
Suppose this is an isolation valve. If you can’t operate the valve to isolate a section of the pipeline, you risk an emergency shutdown, or, worse, a massive safety hazard.
If you find that you are lubricating and injecting sealant into your pipeline valves, but they still won’t operate, the problem is likely not a lack of grease at all.
Here are some common reasons a valve can stop working properly:
- The valve seats have been compromised or damaged by solids such as pipe scale, weld slag, hot tap cuttings, and dirt.
- The flow of dehydrated natural gas has removed the valve sealant and dried out the elastomeric seals, causing them to harden and not seal.
- The gear box or actuator is misaligned or incorrectly set, preventing the valve from opening or closing all the way.
The reason behind all of these common problems is that the valve has been neglected for years, sometimes 15 years or more. Fortunately, these problems, and many others, can easily be avoided by instituting a regular preventative maintenance program. The better you care for your valves today, the fewer problems they will give you down the line.
Valve preventative maintenance programs
Performing regular preventative maintenance will not only extend the life of your valves, it will also help you avoid emergency situations. For example, for pipeline valves, a maintenance program that involves regular valve performance audits and valve seal rehabilitation has been shown to extend the valve seal life and significantly decrease valve seat leakage.
Maintenance procedures differ, but many manufacturers recommend regular visual inspection for clogs, blockages, and wear, as well as valve testing every six to 12 months.
An effective preventative maintenance program has a couple of essential components:
- The right technicians with the right training. All maintenance technicians should be trained on how to safely perform inline valve maintenance. Inexperienced personnel can lead to extremely dangerous situations.
- The right troubleshooting approach. While lubricating and injecting sealant are often the first wave of defense against stuck valves, there are many other things that could be causing the problem. If you find you are greasing your valves for a weeks or months without any measurable improvement, a more advanced approach to troubleshooting is needed.
- The right scheduling tools. Using a valve management application like ValvKeep can help you develop a regular maintenance schedule to reduce your downtime, and your risk.
The ValvePro difference
Allied technicians recently completed ValvePro, which is a comprehensive training program for preventative valve maintenance. ValvePro extends technicians’ OQ qualifications by training them on advanced troubleshooting techniques, so they can move beyond greasing to diagnose, and solve, the underlying causes of valve performance problems. Certified technicians are trained to service valves that are inline and under pressure, reducing the need for shutdowns—both scheduled and emergency.
With hundreds or thousands of valves up and down their pipelines, many companies don’t have the manpower or the skills to perform the preventative maintenance they need. We’re here to help.
As Allied technician Albert “Junior” Wright says: “You can’t argue with safety.”