TPI May 2021

Business & market news

Xiris Automation recruits Dr Patricio Mendez as special adviser to develop new technology

Xiris Automation has announced the recruitment of Dr Patricio Mendez as a special adviser to help the company develop new camera and inspection technologies for the welding industry. Dr Mendez is professor and Weldco industry chair in welding and joining as well as director of the Canadian Centre for Welding and Joining at the University of Alberta. His teaching and research focus on the physics and mathematics of welding

and materials processing, including heat transfer, magnetohydrodynamics, arc plasma, thermodynamics and kinetics. Applications include wear pro- tection for mining, oil extraction, alloy development, procedure development, new welding processes such as laser cladding, casting, solidification and direct metal additive manufacturing using semi-solid processing. Professor Mendez holds a PhD and a MS degree in Materials Engineering from

MIT, and a mechanical engineer degree from the University of Buenos Aires. He is the recipient of various research and teaching awards and has 78 indexed publications and nine patents. As a special adviser, Dr Mendez will contribute to, and help steer, the product development underway at Xiris. Xiris Automation www.xiris.com

Intelligent gas technology for Industry 4.0: smart safety valve with integrated sensor

Witt has introduced its latest innovation, a new safety valve for gases with integrated sensor technology and communication interface, which is now available. The gas technology specialist is making an important contribution to networking and digitalisation on the valve sector’s journey to Industry 4.0, which means more transparency and ultimately greater safety for the user when handling gases.

Safety valves are indispensable in gas applications for protecting people, equipment and process integrity from overpressure. Safety valves fromWitt are spring-loaded and direct-acting. They automatically release overpressure from vessels, pipelines and equipment before an accident occurs. If the pressure drops below the danger threshold, they close again automatically. “Witt safety valves do their job with the utmost reliability, but in some cases may go unnoticed. With the signaling that is now possible, the user knows at all times whether critical pressures are occurring in the system and can react accordingly,” said sales manager Andrew Smart, underlining the impor- tance of the new functionality. “In this case, more information means more safety.” “This is the same valve of which tens of thousands are in service world-wide, but now with this super feature,” he added. According to Mr Smart, this added information is not only valuable for troubleshooting, but the smart Witt safety valves also provide the necessary data to prove that the system is operating faultlessly and, therefore, safely in the long term, which can be interesting for insurers, for example.

The status of the valve is continuously monitored by integrated sensors and communicated via optical and digital signals. Witt has accommodated the smart function extremely compactly in a box, which is firmly connected to the fitting. If the valve opens, this is indicated immediately, optically by a red/green diode directly on the valve and digitally by an NPN/PNP Open Collector signal. The user can be notified every time there is a demand on the valve, and is thus informed of process deviations. This transparency enables early intervention and significantly increases the safety level of the plant. The new SV805 Smart can be used for all technical gases and is available in brass or stainless steel. The opening pressure is individually adjustable from 0.5 to 45 bar. A TÜV certificate confirming the correctly adjusted opening pressure is supplied by the manufacturer. The permissible temperature range is -30°C to +60°C. The component is mounted in any position. The SV805 Smart conforms to the Pressure Equipment Directive 2014/68/EU, category III, module B and D.

The new SV805 Smart can be used for all technical gases and is available in brass or stainless steel

WITT-Gasetechnik www.wittgas.com

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TUBE PRODUCTS INTERNATIONAL May 2021

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