A Radical New Innovation in Magnetic Valves

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Pump Engineer Publisher

January 29, 2019

Then to Now: Valve packings have been employed for hundreds of years, and though modern high tech, low emissions gland packings bear little resemblance to the leather or jute gland seals of olden days, they do not alter the fundamental problem: Once a valve reaches the end user, the manufacturer cannot control the environment it will be subjected to – dirt, grit, salt, corrosion, and caustic working fluids all take their toll. By Ned Davis – Plexis Engineering

Magnetically actuated pack-less valves go back 75 years, to Ralph Carlson’s work at Crane in the early 1940s. Yet despite the allure of a stemless valve operated solely by magnets, and the ideas being revisited in every decade since, magnetically actuated valves caught on only in a few niche applications, given the expense and delicate nature of suitable high-strength magnets prior to the late 90s/early 2000s. However, even since the advent of relatively inexpensive Neodymium Iron Boron magnets in the past 20 years, with applications from motors for electric cars to children’s toys, magnetic valves have not progressed as far as their proponents hoped.

While acknowledging that there have been several key reasons for this lack of progress, these problems are surmounted with a new technology that overcomes past hurdles like potential failure at high temperatures, stuck valve conditions, corrosion, demagnetization events, static service seals, and older port connections that negated many of the potential advantages of magnetic valves.