Electric or Pneumatic Actuator?

In today’s world of increasing technology, there is a greater need for valve automation via actuators and AVCO caters for almost every scenario.

We offer a wide range of pneumatic & electric actuators, positioners, limit switches, manual overrides and associated accessories, all made to the highest standards and easily mounted to most of our valve products.  This gives the ability to automate many of today’s processes for essential services, from basic remote open/close operations in harsh environments to precise flow control and metering.

The most common actuator used for valve actuation is the pneumatic actuator and AVCO supplies a ‘C’ series which is a quarter-turn double acting or spring return with the added feature of fail-safe in either open or closed positions.  Pneumatic actuators provide high speed operation and high torque for their size and are often repairable on-site to minimize down-time, due to their ‘mechanical’ nature.  They need additional accessories to give full functionality depending upon their operation, such as a solenoid valve to control air supply switching, a limit switch for basic open and close position feedback and control, or a positioner to give dynamic feedback for flow control.  Pneumatic actuators are also very useful when coupled with diverter valves as the speed of diversion can be as low as 0.3 seconds.  The need for accessories on a pneumatic actuator is far from a hindrance as they can be easily adapted to provide almost any type of feedback to a central monitoring station.  The advent of the computer age has led to the emergence of digital positioners bringing pneumatic actuators into the microprocessor based, intelligent instrumentation market.

Electric actuators are becoming very popular as their general reliability has improved over the years and the fact that they tend to be slightly more compact due to having built-in accessories.  AVCO always keeps up with modern technology and our electric actuators are no exception.  The AVCO electric actuators are available with or without integral manual overrides, spring return fail-safe options and a multitude of feedback and logic control systems.  NEMA 4 enclosures provide excellent resistance to harsh environments and integral heaters give rise to greater operating temperature ranges.  Additional accessories are rarely required for an electric actuator as the use of modular ‘plug-in’ control cards allow for quick and easy conversion of the logic system.  This gives electric actuators their compactness and often just one connection point.

The choice of actuator is really dependant upon what conditions exist at the site and how it is to be integrated into the management system – There really is no right or wrong solution in most applications; it is a choice!

AVCO’s friendly staff are always available to give advice and guidance regarding actuator choice, having many years experience in all industries.

This entry was posted in News, Technical and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply