why we use double acting valve and where?

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why we use double acting valve and where?..

Normally a control valve is refer to by it's fail position.
This means "what position will the valve move to should the
supply air or control signal to the valve falls away". This
is important to safe guard the process at various places so
some valves will be fail open and some fail close. In order
to have valve as a fail open or close the valve the actuator
have to be spring loaded. So by having the spring on top or
bottom of the actuator piston, will determine if it will be
a FO or FC valve. This kind of valve is also called single
action since it will only have one output from its
positioner to either the top or bottom of the actuator. The
positioner on the valve is also setup as a single acting
positioner since it will only give a single action to the
actuator, the reverse action will be done by the spring. The
problem with this setup is that it is possible that the
process might be so strong or the pressure so high (during a
blow down or ESD shutdown in the plant) that the spring
might in certain instances be to week to push the valve into
the fail position quick enough, due to the back pressure
from the process and can cause damage to the plant or even a
explosion. To make sure that the valve will go to the fail
position we install a double action positioner with two
outputs. One goes to the top of the actuator and one to the
bottom. This is also very helpful to do very accurate and
stable control on a high flow line since the pressure from
the position do the actual control and not spring control
one way and positioner control the other way as in single
acting control valves. It is also solving the problem that
the valve will now be forced into the fail position by the
spring as well as the positioner supply pressure during a
emergency.
In shutdown valves (open/close ESDV's) the same is true and
sometime at critical and high pressure points we use
hydraulics instead of pneumatics as the double acting agent
to make sure the valve will close during a emergency.
So to summarize the double acting action in ESD and control
valve is just there to make sure the valve will do what it
was designed for. Call it a extra fail safe if you want. In
theory not needed since a single acting valve should do the
trick just as well,but in practice you are at time very glad
you did it especially if you look at the kind of pressures
the valves are working on. With those kind of flows and
pressures you don't want to leave anything to chance.