Print this pagePressure Relief Valves
Installing pressure relief valves can prevent high pressures in some situations. These valves are usually specialist control valves and are sometimes called pressure reducing or even just pressure control valves. All of these open when there is a high pressure and dump flow from the pipeline or pass flow back to the storage reservoir, or sump.
These relief valves can work very well when correctly specified and correctly installed, but it is not always easy to achieve this and relief valves do not cure all high pressures.
The peak surge pressure, the pipe size and length are just three of the factors that affect the suitability and size of pressure relief valves.
The rate of rise of the surge pressure is just as important as the peak pressure because this informs us to the speed of opening needed from the relief valve.
Good design of these valves can only be achieved by studying the whole system and calculating the surge pressures that will occur.
