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The key difference beteween a floating ball valve and a trunnion mounted ball valve is how each
achieves a line seal. Trunion mounted ball valves are uses a spring mechanism and/or line pressure
assistance to drive the upstream seat against the stationary ball. The surface area exposed to the
pressure through the relatively small passageway is actually just the back of the seat.
The floating ball valve utilize natural line pressure to press and seal the ball against the downstream
seat. The line pressure is exposed to a greater surface area - the entire upstream face of the ball,
which is an area equal to the actual pipe size.
A floating ball valve is a valve with its ball floating (not fixed by a trunnion) inside the valve body, it
drifts toward to the downstream side and tightly pushes against the seat under the medium pressure
to ensure sealing reliability. The floating ball valve has simple structure, good sealing performance
but the seat material is required to withstand the workload since the sealing pressure is bared by the
seat ring. Due to unavailability of high performance seat material, floating ball valve is mainly used in
middle or low pressure application.
Ball of trunnion ball valve is fixed, it does not move with medium pressure. Trunnion ball valve has
floating seats. The seats move with the medium pressure to tight the ball and seal ring to ensure
sealing reliability. Bearings could be mounted in top shaft and bottom shaft, which reduces operation
torque. This is widely used in valves with high pressure and big sizes. To decrease the operation
torque and increase sealing reliability, lubricated ball valves are adopted in recent years. A special
sealant is injected between sealing faces of lubricated ball valve to create a layer. This increase the
sealing reliability while decreasing the operation torque, which is better for high pressure, big sized
ball valves.
Anti-static Design
Except for the anti-static features floating ball valve has, the trunnion ball valve has more. The ball of
the trunnion ball valve gets close contact with each other through the trunnion, adjusting cushion,
and down-end cap, the passage of static electricity thus forms together with the valve, which may
lead the static electricity caused by sparks generated by friction between the ball and seat during on
and off performance to the ground to prevent the possible risk of fire or explosion.