1. Definition of Cemented Carbide Valve Balls
Cemented carbide valve balls are typically made with tungsten carbide (WC) as the matrix, with binders such as cobalt (Co) and nickel (Ni) added. They are manufactured using powder metallurgy processes, involving mixing, pressing, sintering, grinding, and polishing to ultimately form a high-performance valve sealing ball. They are mainly used in industries such as oil and gas, chemical, metallurgy, power, and mining where extreme wear resistance, corrosion resistance, high pressure, and high temperature resistance are required.
2. Performance Characteristics of Cemented Carbide Valve Balls
High hardness and wear resistance: Hardness can reach over 90.5 HRA, and wear resistance is dozens of times that of traditional steel balls, effectively resisting the erosion and wear of high-speed fluids and particles.
Corrosion Resistance: Exhibits excellent resistance to acids, alkalis, salts, and organic solvents, maintaining stable performance over long periods in corrosive environments such as chemical and marine engineering fields.
High Temperature and High Pressure Adaptability: Maintains stable performance in high-temperature environments above 400℃ and can withstand high pressures, maintaining good sealing performance even under extreme conditions such as oil drilling and deep-sea drilling.
High Precision: Through precision machining, roundness error can be controlled to the micron level, resulting in a high surface finish and forming a good sealing pair with the valve seat, ensuring zero or extremely low leakage rates.
3. Functions of the Cemented Carbide Valve Balls
Opening/Closing and Flow Regulation: Achieves rapid opening and closing of pipeline media through rotation and regulates flow rate. Its spherical design minimizes flow resistance, reduces friction during opening and closing, and minimizes operational impact, making it suitable for scenarios requiring frequent opening and closing or rapid fluid cutoff.
Key Sealing Component: As the valve sealing surface, it forms a bidirectional sealing structure with the valve seat, maintaining good sealing performance even in high-temperature, high-pressure, or corrosive media, ensuring the safe and stable operation of the pipeline system.
4. Common Applications of Cemented Carbide Valve Balls:
Oil and gas wellhead equipment, Christmas trees, ball valves, metering pumps, plunger pumps.
High sand content, wax content, heavy oil, and high-pressure differential conditions.
High-pressure ball valves in highly corrosive and abrasive processes such as coal chemical engineering, coal-to-oil, polysilicon, and PTA production.
Mining slurry valves and tailings conveying valves.
High-pressure plunger pumps, mud pumps, high-pressure homogenizers, and other reciprocating pumps.
