Reservoir guard-valve solution from KT Hydraulics . ........7BACK ____________________________________________________________________________________

Halifax based hydraulic systems specialists KT Hydraulics has brought benefits to maintaining everyday water supplies through employing technology developed for the North Sea offshore oil industry. The company has just completed a contract for the Isle of Man Water Company to replace the guard-valves and associated operating systems at its Clypse reservoir on the island.

The previous upstream guard-valves at Clypse had been manually operated from the surface via rod linkages over 50 metres in length. This required some 3,000 complete turns of the operating wheel, taking up to 4 hours to fully open each valve. In comparison the hydraulic actuator system designed and installed by KT hydraulics now completes the same task in just 30 seconds.

Once the reservoir had been drained and the existing upstream valves and linkages removed by IoM Water Authority contractors, KTH supplied and installed two hydraulically operated guard-valves with actuators plus the required control panel and hand operated hydraulic pump on the surface and all the necessary hydraulic pipework to link the system together. KTH engineers then flushed, tested and commissioned the completed hydraulic system.

Richard Young, project engineer at Isle of Man Water Authority is in no doubt that hydraulic systems are the way forward for this type of application. “Mechanically operated relief valves were traditionally the only option available and their relatively low cost has kept such systems in the market well past their operational peak. Developments in hydraulic valve actuation technology have now rendered mechanical operation obsolete, providing far better performance and reliability with minimal maintenance requirements.”
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The installation at Clypse reservoir forms part of a growing demand for KT Hydraulics’ expertise from the water industry, as director Richard Ellis explains. “Our years of development work in the offshore oil industry have produced a number of products and solutions that are easily transferable to other industries – in this case water utilities.

Products such as our submersible gearbox and hydraulic systems are designed to operate in the harshest of conditions with minimal maintenance, giving them a long operational lifespan in water and water treatment applications.

The existing mechanical system at Clypse was only a few years old but already experiencing problems. The performance superiority of the hydraulic option was such that replacement rather than repair became the natural choice.”

As specialists in the design and manufacture of complex hydraulic systems KT Hydraulics has built a worldwide reputation for its work in the shipping and offshore energy industry and its engineers are currently engaged on projects across the globe.